


Mystery Dungeons of Doom

by ratonastring



Category: Invader Zim, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Gen, im back on my pmd bullshit lads, irken x child shippers dni
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratonastring/pseuds/ratonastring
Summary: A surprise move from the Resisty forces the Irken Empire to hold their mission on standstill and hide away on a new planet, filled with strange places called Mystery Dungeons. Meanwhile, the Membrane siblings get turned into Irkens and somehow wake up on this new planet, but the only person who believes it's them is GIR. How can things get any worse? Let's find out!
Relationships: Almighty Tallest Purple/Almighty Tallest Red, Tak/Invader Tenn, Zim & GIR & Gaz Membrane & Dib Membrane
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	1. Several Bad Decisions in the Span of a Few Hours

To be honest, this is probably the one outcome _nobody_ expected.

I mean, anything else could’ve gone down – this _is_ the timeline where there’s a giant, sentient Santa Claus suit in space gathering strength until he can attack the Earth again, after all. This is the timeline with vast alien empires and small but determined alien resistances, the timeline with sentient robot children, the timeline with aliens throwing planets into their sun to “help it,” the timeline where the only thing standing between the dumb-as-all-hell masses of humanity and total destruction is a twelve-year-old conspiracy theorist. As far as timelines go, this is the equivalent of God’s abandoned _Animal Crossing_ town.

But _this_? Nobody expected this.

I mean, after all, the Resisty is pretty much a non-threat – well, it was supposed to be. Barely any of the Irken Empire’s countless victims had the courage to join them, and most of their victories were won by sheer dumb luck. But dumb luck or not, victories are victories, and it’s proving itself to be a genuine threat.

Or, at least, that’s what Zim heard, after the Tallest released a video announcement to all Irkens they could contact: _We are aborting our mission for the time being. All invaders are to return to the Massive as soon as possible. This is not a drill. The Resisty_ (the name met with some thinly-veiled laughter from Purple) _has captured Irk and vowed to search all of space to find Irken invaders. Every one they find will be either killed or kept as a war prisoner. I have no idea why they told us this. If you do not return, we can offer you no protection. This is not a drill._

There’s a long, long silence after the screen shuts off, broken by a single, yet understandable, “Fuck!”

“Language, GIR,” mutters Zim, seemingly broken out of his trance. “How could this have happened? Why hasn’t Zim ever heard of this ‘Resisty’ and how were they able to capture Irk? Is this some sort of joke? . . . No, of course not, the Tallest would never joke about something like this . . .”

“Does this mean we’re gonna have to leave?” asks GIR, a slight whine in his voice. He’d only been among Irken society for a couple of minutes; Earth is his _home_.

“I mean . . .” His voice trails off as the full extent of what his leaders said fully sets in. “I suppose so. But our mission! Earth! Everything we’ve worked for! I’d _just_ given that platypus a taste for human blood! The Tallest are gonna _kill me_ if I give up now.”

“But they’re the ones who ordered you to come back.”

“Oh. You’re right. Well, I guess we’d better get packing!”

GIR tugs at Zim’s tunic and looks up at him, tears welling in his ocular lenses. “But we gotta say goodbye to everyone!”

“Like who?”

“I dunno . . . Dib ‘n Gaz ‘n everybody.”

“Pft! If you really think I’d waste my time saying goodbye to those _stupid human worm babies_ , then you’d–” He’s interrupted by a loud, high-pitched wail as the robot flops down onto his stomach and begins pounding the floor, sobbing. “Oh no – uh – I – don’t – you don’t need to . . . _tears_?”

He perks up. “Thanks, Master! You always know just what to say!”

“Zim knows. But anyways, I’m still not–” The wailing returns in full force. “FINE! FINE, WE WILL! Alright?”

GIR cheers and gives him a bone-crushing hug that nearly breaks his PAK into a million pieces and kills him on the spot. “I’m goin’ to their house!” he says, and before Zim can do anything to stop him, he flies out through the ceiling, shattering it, but I guess it doesn’t matter now that they’re about to leave.

The Irken sighs and takes the elevator back to the main level, sitting on the kitchen table with a paper and pencil in front of him, unsure of how to write a letter – not just in this situation, he doesn’t know how to write in general. He can’t fucking read. English is a difficult language. He tries, though. He always does.

~

Zim isn’t in Skool today, which bodes terribly for Dib. Either he’s planning something or he’s facing a bigger threat that _also_ wants humanity gone.

It’s honestly a bit boring without his rival, but not in a bad way, you know? He’s had to stop him from destroying the world for so long, he’s almost forgotten what it means to be a normal kid again. Still, though, the horrible mundaneness of Ms. Bitters’s pessimistic lectures and the bullying of his peers isn’t something he’s _that_ keen on revisiting.

He’s getting his backpack out of his locker at the end of the day when he sees it – a single magenta envelope stuck in the vent. On the front, it says _TO: THE DIB-MONKEY_ in sloppy green handwriting. He groans. There’s only one person who calls him that, and he’s already made plans for tonight. He opens the letter, planning on writing Zim back and asking him to maybe reschedule his newest world domination plot, but all it says is _BYE :) – FROM: THE MIGHTY ZIM_.

“’Bye’? The fuck does he mean ‘bye’?” mutters Dib. He thinks about it for a little while, before coming to a conclusion: “He’s trying to make me let my guard down! That bastard! Well, it won’t work. I’ll go spy on his house tonight and see what he’s up to.”

~

He enters his lab to gather his equipment only to realize it’s already occupied. “Gaz! What are you doing?”

“I got this new video game,” she explains passively, not looking away from the screen as she shoots down UFOs. “Someone threw it in through my window and it only runs on the big supercomputer you have in here. It’s fun, I guess, but I can’t read the dialogue. I think it’s in Russian.” It’s absolutely not in Russian.

Dib notices the packaging on the floor. The game’s box has an image of what seems to be the beginning of a battle, Irkens on one side and several other aliens he doesn’t recognize on the other. “Zim gave this to you, didn’t he?”

She shrugs. “Would make sense. Now fuck off, I’m in the zone.”

“Of course! This must be part of his plan!” he says to himself. “This game is propaganda. I mean, the Irkens are the good guys here, but they aren’t in real life. He’s taking advantage of Gaz’s love of video games to sway her to his side so she can join him and use her weird, dark powers that nobody really thinks about for evil! GAZ!” He knocks the controller out of her hand. “PUT IT DOWN! DON’T BELIEVE HIM!” A sad piano tune plays from the speakers as the game shifts to an image of a broken PAK. What can only be assumed to be the words ‘GAME OVER’ in this mystery language (not really a mystery, though, since it’s in Irken) flash on the screen.

She opens her eyes a bit and gives him a look that could freeze molten metal. “Listen here, _Dib_ , you just made me lose. Now, I haven’t lost this game since I first got it, _Dib_. I’ve been playing this for _seven hours, DIB_. I know I’ve promised to be a bit nicer and all that, but if you don’t get whatever you came here for and leave, I can’t guarantee you’ll leave with all your bones.”

He does as she says, not bothering to point out that it’s _his_ lab, grabbing his camera and making his way towards his rival’s house.

~

It’s not there.

It’s legitimately fucking gone. The only sign that a murderous alien once lived here is the pit in the ground and the holes in the walls of the neighboring buildings.

Dib doesn’t know what to believe anymore. _Is_ this another one of his plots? Or did he actually just leave? Whatever’s going on, something doesn’t sit right about all this. He looks down into the pit. So many tunnels, so many different compounds, once enforced with walls, now just imprints of what they were. It’s like an ant colony, almost. There still has to be _something_ down there.

He leans forward a bit. “I know you’re down there, asshole,” he calls. “You can come out now. I know all about your evil plan.” No response.

“He couldn’t have gotten smarter, could he?” Normally, Zim would yell back some sort of stupid insult and give away his position. Maybe he doesn’t feel insulted enough. Dib leans forward again. “You’re a piece of shit alien, you know! You’ll never amount to anything! You’re, uh . . . you’re just like your father!” Still no response. “And your Tallest are stupid!” There. If that doesn’t work, nothing will.

. . . Apparently, nothing will.

He gets as close to the edge as he can without falling, which evidently doesn’t work. The loose soil gives way under him and he plummets into the darkness below, with a cry for help that no one hears.


	2. Irk . . . 2!

You don’t really realize just _how_ many planets were in the process of being invaded until you see how crowded the Massive is now.

It’s bustling with Irkens, all shoving past each other, murmuring their concerns either to their friends or no one at all. The Irken Empire is supposed to be _unstoppable_. How could the Resisty hurt it this badly? And what happened to everyone still on Irk?

The latter question is answered pretty quickly. “Attention, everyone!” announces Purple, successfully gathering everyone’s attention because if he doesn’t, they’ll be thrown out the airlock. “All inhabitants of Irk have been killed. We are officially the last of our kind.” The commotion turns to silence. So much for laying it on gently. A smeet starts crying loudly.

“But, uh . . .” stammers Red, hoping to salvage this, “. . . this isn’t a bad thing! I mean, who even lived on Irk anyways? We’re all here! Just so long as nobody comes to fuck shit up–”

“I’VE COME TO FUCK SHIT UP!” announces a familiar voice from the crowd as Zim begins to shove his way through. “My Tallest! Who did this to our empire? Just tell Zim and they’ll be dead before you can say . . . uh, before you can say something really fast!”

Both Tallest groan. “I guess we forgot he’s still hooked up to communications, huh?” mutters Red as an aside to his husband. Purple just nods, his eyes half-shut and a blank expression on his face, beginning to have another dissociative episode because Zim just has that effect on people. “Well, we’re almost there. There’s a lot of places we could just leave him.”

“Almost where?” asks Skoodge, as the microphone is still very much on.

“Oh! Purple, would you like to tell them?” He’s still dissociating. “Fine, I guess I will. Well, you see, now that Irk has been destroyed, we’re officially moving to a brand new planet! Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

“No!” says the crowd in unison.

“Aw, come on. We’ve already set up a little town and everything. We moved all the food service drones there, too.”

“But what about the janitorial drones?”

Red shrugs. “We got one, that’s enough.”

“Are you sure, though? I mean, we’re _all_ moving there, aren’t we?”

“Ah, we can just throw our trash in one of those weird pocket hell dimensions. The mystery thingies.” A hand raises from the crowd. “Yes, Invader Lardnar?”

“ _The fucking what_?”

“Oh! Well, you see, this planet is filled with those . . . those mystery bastards. Y’know, the ones where you go in and there’s a bunch of cool shit lying around but everything’s trying to kill you and it changes every time you go in and there’s stairs where there absolutely shouldn’t be stairs.”

“They’re called _Mystery Dungeons_ , Red,” says Purple, still half-absent from the conversation. “Anyways, uh . . . throw that Lardnar guy out the airlock. He’s not allowed to say fuck. Not since the incident. Plus, he has a really similar name to the leader of the Resisty. He’s probably a double agent or something, I dunno.” A panicking, screaming Irken in the crowd is grabbed by a pair of guards and thrown directly into the airlock above them, like how when kids’ parents would each grab them by an arm and swing them, but with bad intentions. The airlock opens and Lardnar is sucked into the vacuum of space. Nobody really notices that the ship’s beginning to stop, having finally arrived at its destination, because while it’s not exactly _uncommon_ , it’s still not comforting to see your leaders publicly execute a guy for saying fuck.

“But anyways!” shouts Red in a cheerful voice that sounds like one of those bands consisting of college graduates who’d hit rock bottom that’d play at a Skool assembly and tell the kids that doing drugs is _totes not yeet yo_ through the power of song. This is a bit out of character for him, but his co-Tallest seems to be actively trying to cause a riot, so you gotta do what you gotta do. “Introducing Irk . . . _2_!”

~

_“Where . . . am I?”_

His eyes slowly drift open. He’s floating everywhere and nowhere at the same time, surrounded by what could be every light and color known to man (he even sees some that were assumed to be shrimp-only knowledge), or what could be none. There’s a sound, a voice – a comforting one, at that. He’s seen enough supernatural movies to know where this is going.

_“Are you . . . are you the Grim Reaper?”_

_No, of course not. I saved your life._

_“What? Why?”_

_Because, my child, there’s something you and your sister need to do._

_“Could you be more specific?”_

A pause.

_No._

~

Dib wakes up in the middle of a small forest clearing, which is weird, because he fell down a pit. So unless somebody decided to rescue him and changed their mind about halfway through, he shouldn’t be here. What’s weirder, though, is the Irken lying down beside him.

He jumps back, screaming, and the Irken begins to wake up. She has strange purple antennae that hang down and curl below her chin, and she’s wearing a very familiar outfit. She looks . . . a lot like Gaz. “What the fuck is your problem? I’m trying to take a nap, asshole.” Definitely Gaz.

“You’re – you’re an _alien_!”

She opens her eyes, still brown but now bug-like with no pupils or irises, and glares at him, before her expression changes to that of confusion and vague concern. “So are you.”

“ _What_? But that’s impossible!”

Gaz shrugs. “Go see for yourself. There, in that convenient reflection pool.” He does so.

There, staring back at him, is an Irken that’s also undeniably _him_ , with antennae that stick out in the same weird way as his hair. Like Gaz, his eyes haven’t changed color, but they’re bug-like, and instead of glasses, he wears goggles; the rest of his outfit is all the same, though. His hands (now with three fingers instead of five) fly up to cover his mouth to keep himself from screaming again. _Dib Membrane_ and _alien_ aren’t two things that can coexist within the same body, because Dib is a _human_ that’s supposed to stop the aliens and save humanity. Take that away from him, and what’s left? Now that he’s an alien – an _Irken_ , no less . . . now what? Wouldn’t he be a hypocrite for trying to capture Zim? Irkens are evil. They do nothing but conquer and destroy every civilization they come across. Is _he_ evil now? He doesn’t feel like it. He feels the same, yet so, so horribly _different_.

“You done having a crisis yet?” He nods slowly, feeling like a web browser with like fifty different tabs open. “Good. What should we do about GIR?” He looks where she’s pointing, and there, lying on the ground asleep, is the little robot. As if things couldn’t get any weirder.

He gently pokes his shoulder, and his teal ocular lenses open. GIR smiles. “Good morning!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh. I saw you sleepin’, so I decided to lie down next to you so nobody’d think there’s a problem.”

“How . . . how does that make it look like there’s _not_ a problem?”

“I dunno! Anyways, wanna join our Exploration Team?”

“Your what?”

“Woo-hoo! Awesome! We’re gonna have a great time!” GIR envelops them both in a hug. “HEY! MASTER! I FOUND SOME TEAMMATES!” Dib quickly tries to cover his mouth with his hand, but it’s far too late. A familiar green bastard enters the scene.

“GIR! There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” Zim narrows his eyes, looking at the two siblings. “And who are they?”

“They’re our new teammates!”

“Oh. Great work, GIR! I knew we’d do better with a full team.” He pauses. “You know, they look kinda familiar.”

“ZIM! So _you_ were the one behind this!”

“Behind what?”

“Behind turning us into _aliens_!”

He looks at them a bit closer. “Gonna be honest, I’m not sure who you are.”

“It’s _me_ , Zim. Dib. And that’s Gaz who’s decided to opt out of this conversation entirely.” She’s absentmindedly kicking pebbles into the convenient reflection pool, with no video games to distract her from the two’s dumbassed antics.

“Oh, that’s funny. Y’know, Zim knew a Dib back on Earth. Small, annoying, wore a raggedy trenchcoat kinda like yours. Exactly like yours, actually. And I knew a Gaz, too. Not as horrible as her ‘brother,’ but scary.”

“That’s because it _is_ us, asshole.”

Zim reflects on this for a minute or so. “No, of course not. The Dib-thing and the Gaz are _human_ , and you’re clearly Irken.”

“Because _we turned into Irkens_. I just told you. That’s literally the first thing I said.”

“Nah. That’s impossible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Irken, and those two are human.” Dib feels like slamming his head into something until he passes out. “Wait, hold on . . .” starts Zim, beginning to piece something together.

“You’ve finally realized that we’re the same Dib and Gaz from Earth who’ve somehow turned into Irkens?” asks Dib hopefully.

“ _Where are your PAKs_?”

. . . Oh. This might not be good. They’ve probably almost used up the ten minutes it takes for an Irken to die without their PAK, but Dib feels perfectly fine. Curious, he digs his fingers into his arm and draws a few speckled drops of blood. Red. Not the hot pink that Irkens have. “We, uh . . . we lost them.”

Unfortunately, Zim notices what he’s done. “Your blood! It’s – the shutdown must have already started. I think it’s poisoned or something,” he says, panicked.

“No, see, since we have human blood, I think it means that we still have the genetic composition of humans, so we don’t need–”

“We need to get you back to town,” he interrupts, having not listened to a single fucking word. “I mean, me and GIR took the safe route here, but we don’t have much time. We’re gonna have to cut through Forgotten Forest.”

“What in the goddamn fuck are you talking about?” asks Gaz.

“It’s a Mystery Dungeon. No time to explain, let’s go. GIR! Make sure they don’t try anything funny.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” says the robot, his ocular lenses and chest plate turning red. He grabs the two, one by each hand, and follows Zim as they head into the forest.

~

While Gaz isn’t exactly a nature person, you can’t deny that Forgotten Forest is pretty.

The trees are tall and twisted into shapes that exist nowhere on Earth, with bubblegum pink trunks and teal leaves and crawling vines covered in flowers as big as her head in colors that don’t exist. Looking up, she can see a blood-red sky through the foliage, and there are patches of undergrowth with a sweet scent that’s deeply comforting and yet reminds her of nothing that could exist. There’s also this strange, peaceful flute music in the background. It’s like somewhere out of a video game, but also not because she feels as though this place would be literally impossible to depict through images. Even my narration doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of it.

GIR has returned to normal and is humming a cheerful song, occasionally stopping to point out things he sees, while Dib appears to be just as awestruck as her. Zim, meanwhile, is on constant guard, as if the trees could suddenly burst into motion and beat them to death.

Gaz pauses, noticing a dark blue berry on the ground – despite calling it a berry, it’s as big as an apple. She picks it up and studies it closely. “What’s this?”

Zim stops and gives it a good look. “That’s either the one that heals all wounds or the one that kills you instantly. I don’t know.”

“Comforting.” She hands it to Dib, and he puts it in the pocket of his trenchcoat, just in case. “Hey, haven’t we already passed this pond?”

“Yeah, we have,” points out her brother. “About five times now, in fact. You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course! Zim always knows what he’s doing!” lies the former invader, even though Zim has no idea what he’s doing at any given moment. Truth be told, since everywhere the Irkens live is so heavily industrialized, an Irken in nature is like a fish out of water.

She sighs and places her hand on her forehead. “I’m so glad we don’t actually need PAKs or we’d be dead by now.”

“Nonsense! Of course you do! That’s why we need to hurry.” He turns around and begins his stupid little march again, only to trip over a root and fall face-first on the ground.

“God fucking damn it – what aren’t you getting, Zim?” Her anger is becoming uncontrollable now. “We’re _human_ and _we know you_ , but you’re acting like we’re strangers, and now you’ve dragged us into a Nightmare Zone or whatever you called it and we’re _lost_ and you’re making an idiot of yourself because you think we’re dying, even though we keep telling you we’re _not_!” At the last word, she stomps her foot angrily, and now everything’s beginning to shake.

“Gaz? What did you do?” asks Dib cautiously.

“What _did_ I do?” she asks Zim; even though he has no idea what he’s doing, he knows this place at least a _little_ better than they do.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “You’ve angered the forest,” he mutters.

The noise stops and a small creature drops out of a tree. It looks almost exactly like a squirrel. She can’t stop herself from laughing a bit. “Seriously? _This_ is what you were afraid of?” It hisses, exposing rows upon rows of needle-sharp teeth, and suddenly thousands more drop down, preparing to swarm the trio.

The . . . trio?

“GIR! Where’s GIR?!” shouts Zim, panicking.

“We’ll find him later! _RUN_!”

The not-squirrels seemed to have all merged together in a way, taking on the shape of a large wave. The three barely manage to get out of the way as they crash down on them, a hissing, chattering mass of teeth and fur and bloodlust, but they’ve somehow all gone on different paths.

Gaz can only hope for the best as she sprints at a speed she didn’t know she was capable of, guilt eating at her. What if the others are dead? It’s her fault this whole thing started. But she can’t worry about that now. She just has to run.

“Hi, Gaz! Over here!” calls a familiar voice. She turns to the left, where the voice is coming from, away from the narrow path and into a small clearing.

“GIR?”

“I found the stairs!” he says cheerfully, pointing towards a stone staircase that seems to go into the canopy. She doesn’t bother to question why there’s a staircase in the middle of a forest or how this could possibly help before running up and it all goes black again.

~  
The four are standing in the middle of the forest, in a very similar spot to where they were when they began. “What . . . just happened?” asks Dib, panting.

“We got chased by horrible little filth creatures and then we got separated,” informs Zim helpfully.

“Me ‘n Gaz found the stairs!” says GIR.

“The . . . stairs? In a forest? How’d that help us?”

“It doesn’t really matter what kind of Dungeon it is. They all have stairs, and that’s how you get to the next level. This one only has three, I think.” Gaz nods as if she has any idea what those words mean, still a bit caught up on the fact that she almost got them all killed. “Come on, we need to go!”

That floor is mostly smooth sailing. Gaz finds a strange glowing orb on the ground that apparently puts enemies to sleep, and Dib finds a coin that’s worth exactly fifty-one moneys (apparently, all the coins are worth different amounts of moneys even if they all look exactly the same, so it’s really a shot in the dark. It’s a mystery how the Irkens’ economic system has survived this long). Zim nearly gets eaten by a carnivorous plant, but he’s okay because GIR made friends with it (somehow). The third floor is even easier, since the room they start in is the same room as the staircase.

They stumble out of the forest, unsure how or if they’re still alive. “Hurry, it’s right down this path!” They make their way down an old dirt path and wind up on a hill, overlooking a jarring industrial town of hot pink. “We’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha wow lmao can y'all believe it took me until next decade to upda *is executed by firing squad*
> 
> but seriously though, thank you for all the nice comments!! i'm sorry i don't personally reply but i feel like you should know that every time someone compliments me i burst into tears (in a good way!!!!)


	3. The Next Step

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

He doesn’t get a response. She appears to be lost entirely in her own world, pacing around the strange space, looking downwards.

Worried green eyes try to decipher his former leader’s body language, to try and understand what her thought process is. Something is wrong. It must be. She may be cruel – that’s kind of a requirement for ruling an intergalactic empire that wants to destroy and/or enslave all other life – but this isn’t like her. There’s usually a method to her madness. “I mean, they’re only smeets – and not even Irken ones. Should we really be putting _this_ much in their hands?”

Her reaction is cold as it usually is; not the soothing, musical voice she uses when she’s trying to get her way: “What’s best isn’t always what’s right.”

~

“By no means should you still be alive.” You can tell that Zim’s having a difficult time piecing this together. To be fair, to him it’s like someone missing their brain, so this is some mildly worldview-shattering type shit. “You haven’t had your PAKs for an hour, and judging by the strange blood color, you’re in the late stages of manual deactivation. But somehow, you’re still alive.”

“Mm-hm.”

“But Irkens die within ten minutes of losing their PAK.”

“Maybe it’s because _we’re not fucking Irken_.” There’s not nearly as much snap in Dib’s words, but there’s definitely a lot more exasperation. He’s being trying to reason with this little green bitch for the past twenty minutes – meaning that if he and Gaz _were_ Irkens in desperate need of PAKs, he would have literally talked them both to death at this point. Of course, that’s looking over the fact that they were definitely in Forgotten Forest for longer than ten minutes, and yet Zim somehow didn’t catch on until Dib stopped him just before entering the medical center. The two of them are still outside the hot pink building (everything here is in hot pink) labeled “MEDICA L CENTER” in Impact font, the last “l” of “medical” not fitting on the top half.

He wonders where Gaz and GIR are. Apparently, he took her on a tour of the Irk 2 settlement, but they should be back by now. A part of him envies her – _she_ doesn’t have to put up with this shit.

“But that’s . . . you’re . . . okay.”

“Okay?”

“Zim is getting tired of this conversation.”

“I got tired of this conversation twenty minutes ago.”

Suddenly, an alarm starts blaring, followed by familiar shrill laughter. “QUICK! WE GOTTA GO!” shouts Gaz, running towards them with her eyes wide open for once, her arms filled with teal orbs, multicolored discs, bottles of medicine, berries, and seeds (how she’s carrying all of that is beyond me).

“We did _crimes_!” says GIR cheerfully; he’s holding a big burlap sack filled with moneys (which, for some reason, has the American dollar sign printed on it) slung over his shoulder.

Oh. So _that’s_ where they went.

“GIR! What in the hell did you do?!” snaps Zim.

“Crimes, did you not hear me?”

“We don’t have time for this,” says Gaz, panicked. “There’s a big tall dude who’s–”

“ _Gotcha_.”

A tall, purple-eyed Irken wearing an apron seemingly manifests behind Gaz out of thin air. Zim lets out a noise that sounds a little bit like a balloon being deflated. “Oh, uh . . . Sizz-Lorr. What are you doing here?”

“All food service drones were ordered to the Massive, as well as the invaders. The real question is what’s a defective exile like _you_ doing here?”

“ _ZIM IS NOT AN EXILE_!”

“Isn’t this the guy who kidnapped you that one time?” asks Dib, suddenly recognizing him.

“You’ll have to be more specific, but yes, he tried. But oh, I was too smart for him! I–”

“You ran away from your punishment. You _left me_ to take the brunt of the Foodening alone. And, uh, Gashloog, I guess.” He picks Zim up by the back of his invader uniform. “I’m sure the Tallest would _love_ to hear why you felt like you were above consequences. You’re coming with me.” He begins to march off to the tallest building in the settlement before turning back to face the remaining trio. “You too.”

GIR cheers loudly and the Membrane siblings exchange a tired look before following.

~

“And _that’s_ the full story!” finishes Zim. The whole ordeal of explaining their business to the Tallest had taken about two hours. They even did a musical number. It wasn’t very good, though.

“We didn’t need the _full story_ , Zim,” says Red, feeling very much like an exasperated kindergarten teacher. “Me and Pur have known you since we first started training. We knew most of this. What we need to know is how and why your SIR unit committed a heist with some unidentified PAK-less goth.”

“I liked the part with the moose,” says Purple.

“I know you did.”

Dib is paying practically zero attention. He reaches into his trenchcoat pocket for his camera, only to realize it’s not there. “Damn it.” After all, he only needs a little bit of proof to take back home to prove aliens are real. At the concept of _home_ , a sudden dread settles into his heart, but he decides now would be a terrible time to bring it up.

“So how do we start our team?” asks GIR excitedly, bouncing like a toddler at the state fair whose parents are keeping him running solely on novelty junk food and hope while his older sibling is left barely conscious in the convention hall with an unreasonably large cup of that gross pulpy lemonade because they nearly fainted of heat exhaustion as they slowly realize that maybe they _shouldn’t_ have agreed to stay back while their family does a few more rides because it’s 10 P.M. and they’re getting scared.

“Your . . . your what?”

“Our team! You guys said that three Irkens and a SIR unit can form an exploration team.”

Red pauses. “Excuse us for a second,” he says, before pulling Purple aside. “Alright, now what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Exploration teams aren’t actually a thing. We made them up.”

“Oh yeah, I remember! And we made the minimum three Irkens because Zim only has one friend, right?”

“Yeah. And then – and then he _actually believed_ us when we told him there was an important mission in Forgotten Forest.”

“Like, we told him he needed to meet up with someone, but nobody’d ever gone in there! We’d _just_ landed!”

“Irk, he’s such an idiot.”

“I _know_! I mean, I was kinda hoping he’d die.”

“Me too!”

“Hey, uh, tall fuckers?” Gaz can’t hear what the Tallest are saying, but they’re talking and giggling like a pair of twelve-year-olds whose only concept of social interaction is _Mean Girls_. “Yeah, we’re still here. First this trial started with that shopkeeper guy trying to turn Zim in, then the topic changed to me and GIR robbing a store, and now we’re talking about exploration teams or whatever the hell. Shouldn’t a trial have _one_ topic?”

“Right, yeah, sure, whatever. I . . . _guess_ you can be a team?”

“Pur, what the fuck are you _doing_?” whisper-yells Red. “Zim’s _dangerous_. We know that from experience. He got Miyuki and Spork killed, for Irk’s sake! And now you want to give him _allies_?”

“Calm down. I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you, though?”

A pause. “No.”

“Um . . . your Tallers? Is that it?” starts Dib, unsure of alien social conventions.

“Not at all, but go ahead.”

“I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. Me and Zim aren’t friends. We’ve been trying to kill each other since he first showed up on Earth!”

“Don’t mind him, he _thinks_ he’s a human,” informs Zim.

You can practically hear the gears turning in the Tallest’s heads before the lightbulb goes off. “Wait, I’ve got it!” says Red as an aside. “We put Zim on a team with people who hate him so he can’t hurt _us_ because he’s too busy dealing with _them_!”

“Can’t we just, like . . . lock him up or something? Or shoot him?”

“Like hell we can! Some series of increasingly unlikely, almost cartoonish events will take place and he’ll escape, and _we’ll_ probably be the ones to end up dead.”

“Good point, good point.” Purple turns to face the four. “Great news! You’re a team. Good luck, assholes.”

GIR lets out a loud shriek that’s probably supposed to be a cheer, and Zim’s beaming. “Thank you, my Tallest! We won’t let you down!”

“A bit late for that, but okay,” mutters Red.

Dib and Gaz, despite not being the most affectionate of siblings, exchange yet another knowing, pained look. “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” mutters Dib, trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince his sister. “I mean, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?”

“We haven’t been a team for a minute and I’m already sick of this shit.”

“. . . Yeah, me too.”

“Oh! Now I get to take you _both_ on a _real_ tour!” says GIR, grabbing one by each hand as the jets in his feet activate and he flies off, breaking a hole through the ceiling just like he did at the old base, ditching Zim entirely.

There’s a long, awkward silence, which is broken by Sizz-Lorr: “So are we not gonna talk about the other two problems or–”

~

Due to their protests, GIR finally agreed to let Dib and Gaz down and turn this into a walking tour. The settlement sticks out like a sore thumb on Irk 2; it looks like somebody took steampunk, made it sci-fi, and then colored it all the same, blinding shade of hot pink. Buildings aside from the tall council building are practically indistinguishable from each other, the only thing differentiating them being their Impact font signs. The little robot is pointing out several different locations, his words merging into one long, ambiguous chatter.

“There’s the medical center, there’s the labs, there’s the store me n’ Gaz robbed–”

“Fun times.”

“–I know! And there’s the housing quarters, there’s McMeaties, there’s the post office, there’s the medical center . . . hm, we’re goin’ in circles!”

So they are. Despite hating his guts, Dib is about to suggest they go find Zim in case Sizz-Lorr tries to recapture him (food service isn’t a fate he’d wish on anyone) when he accidentally runs into an Irken.

He blinks. The Irken looks _very_ familiar, but he can’t have gotten here _that_ fast. “Zim?”

A laser gun uncurls from the PAK and points itself directly at his forehead. “Call me Zim one more time and see what happens.” Getting a better look, he can tell that this clearly isn’t his rival. She has longer eyelashes, and her antennae curl a small bit (not as much as Gaz’s, though). And unlike him, she seems to be very, _very_ threatening.

“Who are you?”

“Invader Tenn. Conquered seven planets, earned five medals for my efforts. Before you ask – we’re from the same cloning tank.”

“Oh. So you’re his twin?”

“Technically speaking, yes, but Irkens have no need for ‘siblings’ or ‘family.’”

“. . . That’s almost sad.”

“I’d probably find it so, too, if I could.” The laser gun retreats into her PAK and she smirks. “You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood. Otherwise, you’d be dead where you stand.”

“ _This_ is your good mood?” asks Gaz incredulously. Either Tenn doesn’t hear her or she’s pretending she doesn’t.

“Hiya, Tenn!” chirps GIR. She visibly flinches.

“Get . . . get that thing away from me.”

“The thing? You mean GIR?”

“Whatever you want to call it. I don’t want any _defective_ SIR units anywhere near me.”

“How do you know he’s defective?”

“He’s teal. Granted, the ones I got were still red, but _teal_ means _contagious_.” She backs up a little bit, scowling. “He infected MiMi once. Tak’s SIR unit.”

Dib’s eyes widen. “Wait, you _know_ Tak?”

“I mean, she’s the only janitorial drone on the whole planet, but even if she wasn’t, we go way back.”

“She tried to kill us.”

“Good for her.”

Suddenly, McMeaties bursts into flames. Tenn groans. “Oh Irk, not again.” _Some_ thing hits the ground between the two parties at top fucking speed, leaving a hole in the ground (which is impressive, since it’s supposed to be made out of nigh-indestructible Irken steel).

“ZIM HAS ARRIVED!” He’s covered in burn marks, there’s a dark circle around one eye, and he’s currently at the bottom of the ten-foot hole he made.

“What the hell _happened_?”

“Nothing you need to know about.” Several spider-like legs emerge from his PAK, helping him climb out. “The Tallest have assigned our team two dorm rooms. Did you know that we’re the first _ever_ exploration team?” He does not wait for an answer before running away, presumably towards the housing quarters, not waiting to see if his team is following him.

~

Dib and Gaz’s room would probably be considered comfortable by Irken standards. Unfortunately, by human standards, it’s nowhere close.

The beds are the same metal as every-fucking-thing else, and the main feature is the PAK charging station – which probably makes sense, since Irkens’ bodies aren’t really the important part. They’re just vessels for an AI that dictates everything they do. Is that all they are – AI? Biomechanical war machines, who know nothing but destruction? No, they can’t _just_ be AI. They’re too . . . well, Dib wouldn’t say _human_ , but there’s just too much going on. But still . . .

“I think there’s something weird going on, Gaz.”

“Really? I never would’ve guessed.”

“No, not . . . _this_. Don’t you think Zim’s acting a little too nice?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s barely acted evil so far. I think he’s planning something.”

“Might have something to do with the fact that he doesn’t know you’re his arch-nemesis.”

“That can’t just be it, though.” He looks up at the ceiling, at all the blinking hot pink lights swimming in the endless sea of the industrial alien city, their light proving that things are up and running the way they should. He can almost pretend they’re stars. “I mean, Irkens are bloodthirsty. We saw it with Sizz-Lorr, the Tallest, Tenn . . .”

“I think you should go the fuck to sleep.”

“Right. I’ll try to figure this out tomorrow.”

Dib closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him, which, now that I write it, is a _really_ ominous way to describe going to sleep. He’s woken far too soon, and he’s woken by the sound of soft, muffled sobbing. “. . . Gaz?”

“Don’t look at me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s just . . .” She sighs. “Do you think we’ll ever get back home?”

The same fear he realized back at the council returns in full swing. “. . . I don’t know.”

“I miss Dad.”

“Me too. But, well, at least we have each other, right?”

She sniffles. “. . . Right. ‘Night, Dib.”

“’Night, Gaz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUGH i'm sorry updates aren't consistent! school's back, there's some shit going on at home, you know how it is
> 
> also i KNOW i said this in the tags but please-please-please dni if you ship irkens with kids! it makes me uncomforble! also dni if you ship dib n gaz, that's gross


	4. The First Mission

Something is calling out to him.

He’s in his room again; despite knowing it’s a dream, Dib feels relaxed. Even the illusion of home brings on a strong sense of safety. There’s someone in his head, but not like a voice – it’s like he’s thinking, but the thoughts aren’t his own. It’s calm, motherly almost, telling him that he’s safe, that he won’t be hurt, he just needs to do something, something important. He vaguely recognizes it as the same being that called out to him when he fell into Zim’s old lair.

Now the dream is wavering, as if it’s all about to fall apart. He wants to ask what he needs to do, but he can’t talk, can’t even fully think the words he wants to say. Whatever’s contacting him clearly doesn’t want this dream to end just yet, either; it’s calling out, trying to pull him back, but there’s a strange black smoke crawling in through the window and nothing outside. He tentatively reaches out to touch the smoke, and–

~

There’s a loud, cartoonish _THUNK_ noise as the book makes contact with his head (which is still oversized, Irken or not). He sits up with a jolt and notices Zim standing in the doorway. “Ow! What was that for?”

“You weren’t waking up,” he says in a tone that implies that the _obvious_ choice was to make him unconscious all over again with an Encyclopedia-sized book. “Our first mission is today! The Tallest gave me this note. I’m not sure what it says, though.” He hands it to Dib.

_THIS IS A RESTRAINING ORDER. YOU ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED WITHIN A 50 METER RADIUS OF EITHER OF YOUR ALMIGHTY TALLEST. IF YOU FAIL TO OBEY THIS NOTICE, YOU WILL BE DEACTIVATED._

“It’s, uh . . . let’s talk about it later.”

“That . . . that wasn’t the mission. Just so we’re clear.”

“Well, what is it?” He hops out bed, yawns, and stretches. Gaz just pulls her blanket even tighter around her and makes a very angry noise that sounds kinda like a cat when you step on its tail.

“Invader Skoodge went missing in Echo Caves. He’s either lost, being held hostage, or just taking a nice walk. We’re not sure.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be an _exploration_ team?” mutters Gaz to herself, only half-awake.

Zim, evidently, doesn’t catch on that she’s not expecting an answer. “Well, until Irk 2 actually gets a rescue team, we have to do both.” She groans. “I know, I hate it too. But he is what the humans consider a _‘friend’_ to me.”

“What counts as friendship to you guys?” asks Gaz at the same time as Dib asks, “Wait, you have _friends_?”

“Caring about whether or not the other dies.”

“Ah. That sounds about right.” Now that Dib’s fully awake, he notices the noises outside, which include what sounds like a car alarm and terrified screaming. “What’s going on out there?”

“Why do you think I have anything to do with it?”

“Because you always do.”

“Yeah, you’re right. GIR went on a supply run. He’s the only member of our team except for Dib who’s still allowed at Sizz-Lorr’s shop.”

“But weren’t he and Gaz the ones who robbed it?”

“There’s a lot more leniency granted to SIR units than Irkens, since they’re technically under our control, and if we stop controlling them, they won’t commit the crime again. It . . . doesn’t exactly work like that with GIR, but I don’t think they’ve caught on yet.”

There’s that familiar shrill laughter from outside. “I’M COMMITIN’ CRIMES AGAIN! I’M BEIN’ CONTROLLED BY NOBODY! I’M DOIN’ THIS ALLLL BY MYSELF AND YOU’LL NEVER STOP ME!” The window of Dib and Gaz’s room shatters as the teal robot flies in through it, giggling like a toddler who’s also just pulled off a heist. He’s holding several items in his arms. “I got us eight Oran berries, eight Max Elixirs, some apples, and also this weird glowy thing I thought looked cool.”

“Did . . . did you pay for any of it?”

“Nope! Bein’ a law-obeying citizen will _neeever_ compare to the thrill of the kill!”

“Wait, you didn’t kill anyone, did you?” In response, he simply puts one finger up to his mouth in a ‘shh’ motion.

“If we don’t set out now, we won’t get home before dark,” says Zim, getting impatient. “Zim is leaving for this mission and he doesn’t care whether any of you three follow him!” He marches out the door angrily, slamming it behind him. Then, not even fifteen seconds later, the door opens again. “. . . Zim might care a little bit.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” says GIR, his eyes and chest-plate glowing red. “Here, carry these,” he adds as he shifts back to normal, handing the stolen items to Dib, who haphazardly places them in the seemingly infinite pockets of his trenchcoat along with the berry and the Slumber Orb from Forgotten Forest before following his master out the door, still giggling.

There’s a pause. “Why are things always like this?” asks Gaz, exasperated.

“I dunno, but I think we should follow them. They’re _definitely_ planning something, I’m sure of it.” With a new resolution about him, Dib runs after his rival and the little robot, and his sister, not wanting to be the only one left behind, sighs before following.

~

“Hey, what the _fuck_?” They’re in a cave that shines a multitude of colors, any one on the color spectrum depending on your current angle. It’s enough to give you a headache. But, see, the thing that’s worrying is that the team didn’t walk here – they just set off along the crossroads, blacked out, and woke up in sensory hell.

“Yes, mystery dungeons are just like this,” says Zim flippantly. “Come on.” He begins to march off in that weird army way of his, but his stupid little march is interrupted by Dib.

“Wait, if this is a brand new planet, then how do _you_ know how dungeons work?”

He pauses. “. . . I don’t know.” Zim marches off again, and the team follows reluctantly.

The cave is a long, winding place, filled with dead ends, traps (one made Gaz fall asleep for about five minutes, and she seemed reluctant to wake up), and enemies. One such enemy was a strange creature that looked a bit like a bear, but with brute strength and an utter lack of teamwork, the four somehow managed to defeat it by knocking it into a deep pool of water and letting it sink to the bottom. It wasn’t like a really cool fight scene or anything, they all just kinda pushed it in like a family stranded in the middle of nowhere trying to get their car out of a ditch. Nobody knows why it let them. Probably because this is literally the second dungeon in the ‘game.’

The water splashes back onto them with a sizzling sound. Zim hisses in pain, GIR laughs despite short-circuiting (but only a little), and Gaz just screams “FUCK!”

“Interesting,” mutters Dib. “So we don’t need PAKs and we have red blood, but we’re still weak to water . . .” He kneels down and sticks his hand in the pool and it sizzles like when you accidentally put cold water in boiling water and don’t realize your mistake until it’s too late. “Huh.”

“Well, don’t do _that_ , dumbass,” says Gaz. “The stairs are just in this next room. Let’s go.”

She’s right about the stairs. Unlike the stairs in Forgotten Forest, these lead downwards, and also unlike the stairs in Forgotten Forest, it makes at least a _little_ sense for them to be there. Maybe there’s cave tours or something, I dunno.

~

“Why are all the dungeon names so _depressing_?” says Dib, trying to break the awkward silence that’s fallen over the group as they move forwards (presumably. They’re a little lost). “It’s all ‘Forgotten Forest’ this and ‘Echo Caves’ that. Why not, I dunno, _The Fun Zone_?”

“I’d feel way more threatened by a dungeon called _The Fun Zone_ than either of these,” says Gaz. “Why is this place called Echo Caves, anyways?” She looks at Zim as if expecting an answer.

“What do you want Zim to tell you? The Irken Empire _just_ moved here!”

“Well, you seem to know how these places work perfectly fine,” points out Dib. “In fact, I bet you’re just playing dumb so we let our guards down! First you were nice to us when, come on, you _obviously_ recognize us – I mean, you’re stupid, but you’re not _that_ stupid – and then you actually tried to help us when you thought when we were dying . . . probably because you wanted to kill us yourself, and _then_ you formed a team with us so you can spy on us, and _now_ –”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

This stops the former human dead in his tracks. “. . . _What_?”

“I’ve never seen either of you a day in my life before yesterday. I mean, sure, you two _remind me_ of people I knew, but you’re obviously Irken. Plus, I don’t hate you.”

“How do you _not_ recognize us? We tried to kill each other practically every day! And Gaz helped me stop you _lots_ of times, like when you tried to move the Earth or when you captured me that one time. That doesn’t seem like something you’d just forget.”

“Did we . . . ?” The alien pauses. “I guess that sounds about right. The details are getting fuzzy. I’ve been forgetting a lot of things recently. Hey, how do you know all this? . . . Oh, never mind, you’ll just tell me you’re somehow the same person as the Dib-worm again. And as for why I helped you . . . I don’t know. Everyone’s been acting odd lately. Like how Tenn didn’t obliterate you in your tracks, or how the Tallest seemed like they didn’t want anything to do with Zim, or how Skoodge managed to get himself in trouble – he’s short, but he’s not _incompetent_ , which is weird. Nobody’s acted quite like themselves since we moved here.”

“Hey, guys, do you think this might be important?” calls Gaz, right as Dib was about to point out how concerning what Zim just said was. She and GIR are standing next to a wall with lots of sparkling green gems in and around it.

“GIR! Analysis,” demands Zim.

“Sir, yes, sir! **_Echo Stones, the warm-climate cousin of Frisms. Can record somebody’s voice._** ” He shifts back to normal, blinking, before breaking into a fit of giggling. “Ooh, that was fun! I like analyzing things.”

“Is that why this one’s pink?” asks Gaz, poking it with a stick before asking. An unfamiliar voice begins to play. The audio quality sounds a bit like a 3DS recording, but that’s okay, as long as the message gets across.

_“Entry 15 of my mission log: I’m about to confront the Irken in the pit of the cave. I hope he’ll have the answers the Resisty needs. Other than that, it’s going great! Well, everyone else in my team is dead, but other than that. I sure hope I don’t drop any of these in the middle of a dungeon where anyone could find them! That could potentially doom our mission.”_

That’s the end of the audio. “The Irken . . .” mutters Zim. “Are they talking about Skoodge? So that’s why he went missing! He’s being held hostage by the Resisty at the end of this cave! But how could the Resisty have followed us to Irk 2 . . . ?”

“Hi, if I could interrupt, what the hell and fuck are you talking about?” asks Dib.

“The Resisty is a small but determined armed force, set on destroying the Irken Empire and everything it stands for.”

“The Resisty?” snickers Gaz. “The fucking _Resisty_?”

“Yes, they have proven themselves to be terrible at naming things. Now! There’s no time to waste! _Onwards_!” He turns around a promptly marches face-first into a wall. He turns back to look at his teammates as if hoping nobody saw him before brushing himself off and heading down a tunnel with GIR close behind.

Gaz sighs and places her hand on her forehead. “Whoever this Skoodge guy is, he’s fucking doomed.”

“ZIM HEARD THAT! Oh, hey, the stairs.”

~

The next few floors kinda blur together. Nobody’s feeling very conversational, they’re a little lost, and every member of the team has ran directly into a wall at least once. Enemies are either ran away from or haphazardly defeated with anywhere between one to all four nearly dying in the process. They are _hurt_ , they are _tired_ , Zim’s PAK needs to be _recharged_ , Dib has _internal bleeding but that’s okay because that’s where the blood is supposed to be_ , and Gaz and GIR are _hungry_ _and_ _they’re not about to let anyone forget it_. It’s just like a family road trip, internal bleeding and all. They also find a lot of cool stuff, like berries, which doesn’t seem very cool, but they can cure poisoning, paralysis, and burns.

Then, after a few more noteworthy incidents (there was a small zombie outbreak, but only a small one; nothing the Membrane siblings aren’t used to from their father’s labs), and before they know it, the team finds themselves at Echo Pit.

There’s a strange, dark turquoise, goat-like creature with their back away from them, facing a short, chubby Irken whose eyes widen when he recognizes them. “ _Zim_?” he mouths.

“What’s wrong?” asks the creature, turning to face what he’s looking at. They gasp. “ _Irkens_! What are you doing here?”

“We’re here to rescue Resisty Skoodge, Invader scum!” says Zim. “Wait, no, that’s not right, it’s . . . uh . . .”

“It’s okay, take your time.”

“We’re going to beat you to death,” says Gaz helpfully as Zim stumbles over his words.

“You’re . . . you’re what?” asks the kidnapper, a look of vague concern on their face.

Dib sighs. “Look, what my teammates are trying to say is– ”

Before he can finish his sentence, GIR launches into attack mode and flying kicks the alien’s face. “. . . That works too,” says Zim, long, spindly legs emerging from his PAK. He lunges at them and begins jabbing them really fast, but they toss him away with a swipe of their hand, a fierce glint in their eyes.

“If you want to play it like this, we can do that,” they hiss, pulling out a laser gun and pointing it at Dib, but he manages to run away just in time. As he runs, the deadly beam of light follows him close behind _(he can feel the heat just barely missing him, the ground crumbling and burning in a thin trail behind him)_ until he hides behind a large rock, fully preparing to die before hearing a sharp cry of pain and a familiar swooshing noise. He moves out from his hiding place cautiously.

Gaz’s eyes are wide open and full of murderous intent. She’s levitating a few feet in the air, dark energy swirling around her. “Look, I know I may give my brother a lot of shit, but if you even _look_ at my family the wrong way, I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you. _Do you hear me_?”

The alien grins. “That’s good to hear. I was hoping for some fun today.” They aim their gun at him again, but before they can shoot, he tackles them to the ground as best he can, which isn’t well, but he manages to grab the gun for a few seconds. The look in their eyes is almost scarier than the fact they nearly murdered a twelve-year-old (although, granted, they had no way of knowing he’s twelve). “You son of a bitch!” they shout, punching him square in the jaw and knocking him to the ground. They’re reaching for their gun again when they’re hit with the full force of the most dumbassed strategy that ever worked.

“NOW!” With the use of the former’s PAK legs, Zim and GIR employ their genius tactic, which is ‘ _throw the robot baby_.’ He hits the alien square in the head with a really nasty sound that implies a fractured skull, and they collapse to the ground. “Skoodge! We need to go!”

“I . . . you guys didn’t need to do that.”

“Of course we did!”

“No, you really – WATCH OUT!”

For the third time, the alien fires at Dib with the last of their strength, having seemingly never heard the concept of targeting the more dangerous opponent. In a brief second, Gaz decides that if she gets in between them, she can use her weird dark magic to make a shield, but she can only do one of those things. There’s a horrible sizzling sound, like burning flesh, and time seems to slow to a crawl.

” _GAZ_!”

~

She wakes up in a bed at the medical center, and the first thing she notices is the sharp pain in her stomach. She looks down and notices a brownish-red stain, barely noticeable against her black dress, and she can feel bandages against her skin under it. “Thank fucking God,” says her brother, who she’s just now noticing is sitting on a chair on the other side of the room.

“What . . . happened?”

“You got shot.”

“Yeah, I know _that_. How’d I get here?”

“Did you think we’d just leave you to bleed out in a cave?”

“Considering how our time here is going, I kinda hoped you would.”

“Gaz! Don’t even joke about that!” Dib sighs, regaining some of his composure now that he’s sure she’s not dead. “We carried you back. You were mostly unconscious, but you still seemed like you were in pain. It was honestly a shot in the dark whether we’d give you Irken or human treatment, but since we don’t have PAKs, we went with human.”

“Wait, they have human treatment here?”

“No. But I told them to just go with the bandages. They were gonna electrocute you. I . . . don’t really know much else about healing stuff, and since there’s no human medicine, they say you’re gonna have to stay in bed for a few weeks. We gave you some painkillers, but they’re made for Irkens, so I’m not sure how effective they are.”

“It hurts like a bitch, but I think it’d be worse without them. . . . Thanks.”

“Why are you thanking me? I was useless in that fight.”

“We all were kinda useless in that fight. The only reason we won is because Zim threw GIR at their head like some sort of horrible little dodgeball. What was that goat-thing, anyways?”

“Vortian Prisoner 776, 777’s lesser-known sibling. Apparently, they got kicked out of the Resisty and sent here with a few of their buddies because they kept killing people. They said it gave the Resisty a bad name.”

“Ah.”

There’s a pause. “So why did you–”

“Because you’re my _brother_ , asshole,” says Gaz before Dib can even finish his sentence. “I know I give you a hard time, but I care about you. You’re my only family in this place, you know. Also, if it helps, I wasn’t planning on getting hit. I was gonna pull up a shield, but I guess I didn’t have enough energy left.”

He nods, sniffling a little, before getting up out of his chair and beginning to move towards her. “If you hug me, it will hurt and I will scream.”

“Right, sorry. So, uh, what _are_ those weird powers of yours, anyways?”

“It’s a long story, but it all started when I was born. Basically, Ego creatus est in Lab, similis tui, sed cum in te facta est a clone de tata, et factum est ut navitas arma tenebris–”

“Hey, uh, Gaz, you’re – you’re–”

“Sed tunc aliquid abiit iniuriam. Non erat qui iunxit tenebris opera tenebrarum fui risus. Est pars mihi fuit diutius quam habeo.”

“Gaz, you’re doing _the thing_ again. We’ve talked about this, Gaz.”

“Cum puer eram, non in novis potestatibus. Lusus naturae essem, et daemonium ab obumbratio monstrum. Diutissime sensi quasi ego occurrit.”

“ _Gaz_ –”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUUGHGHGH *disappears under mysterious circumstances* i'm sorry i take so long to update but! i have school! i can only edit this from my dad's house! idk man everything happens so much! but i hope you like this!!!


	5. Very Ominous Looking Space Cloud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: body horror

The first clue that something’s wrong is how _early_ the meeting is.

Even if they are an imperialistic, bloodthirsty, warlike species of cyborg-bugs, Irkens are _not_ morning people, not even their leaders. _Especially_ not their current leaders.

Dib shifts nervously. Gaz is still at the medical center, GIR’s nowhere to be found, and he knows not to talk to Zim (the only reason he hasn’t ditched him in the crowd is because he realized that he’s far more scared of the murderous aliens he doesn’t know than the murderous alien he _does_ know), because from what he’d been told, if you speak over the Tallest, they’ll have you executed before you can even explain yourself – like school, but with higher stakes. And, truth be told, he’s terrified of what this announcement might be. Is their murder hiatus over? Is the planet about to be destroyed? Is there a really big execution taking place?

“Attention, everyone,” says Red, standing up on the stage with his partner. There’s a strange expression, or rather lack thereof, on his face. No witty banter, nothing behind the eyes. “We’ve called you here today because we decided that now that our mission’s over, we don’t need SIR units anymore. We’re – we’re getting rid of them.”

“. . . _What_?” He can practically see the color drain from Zim’s face. Even though Irkens aren’t really the brightest of creatures, this all seems just _wrong_ to Dib. I mean, after moving permanently to a new planet, you’d _think_ a robot companion that can collect and process information effortlessly would be a _good_ thing to have. Then something hits him.

_Does GIR still count as a SIR unit?_

There’s a couple of gasps from the crowd, but they quickly shut up, and there’s no murmuring.

“Uh, if you’ve noticed that your SIR unit is missing, this is why. We’re sending them into the nearest star. Also, this includes any . . . _variations_.”

“Why are you doing this?” asks one Irken in the crowd, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

“Because . . .” Purple’s voice trails off mid-sentence. “Airlock,” he mutters, before the curtain closes on the two. But it doesn’t close fast enough to stop the crowd from seeing their leaders collapse to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Nobody seems to care, though, since they’ve just ordered for another execution, and they’re afraid that getting too close will lead them to the same fate. Their announcement is evidently over, which gives the Irkens freedom to talk.

“GIR . . .” whispers Zim in disbelief, holding his head in his hands. He looks like he’s about to cry.

“Where did they put the SIRs?” asks Dib.

“Uh, probably in a shuttle of some sort – why?”

“Let’s stop them.”

Dib honestly expects Zim to refuse, or maybe even turn him in as a traitor – he regrets his words almost as soon as they leave his mouth. To his surprise, his rival agrees with him for what’s possibly the first time since the hamster incident. “What should we do?”

~

“What the fuck are you _thinking_?”

To Gaz, hearing her brother explain his and Zim’s plan is like hearing him explain, with the utmost calmness in his voice, how he’s going to swallow several grenades whole. It’s _stupid_. It’s _dangerous_. It’s fucking _suicidal_.

“I – I don’t know, but I can’t just let them kill GIR.” He sighs as he continues cramming items into his trenchcoat pockets. “He may be an amoral killing machine who helped Zim nearly destroy the world, but he’s like . . . a weird little baby. He’s like a toddler, Gaz. I can’t let them kill a toddler.”

“The Tallest _will_ kill you if they find out.”

“Truth be told, I don’t think the Tallest are in a state to kill _anyone_. They fainted right there onstage. And you know how Irken eyes have those lighter parts where the light reflects off it? Theirs were gone. Like, for the whole speech. They looked _dead_. They didn’t even blink once. If they weren’t a pair of imperialistic asshats running an empire whose ultimate goal is to destroy or enslave all non-Irken life, I’d almost be worried.”

“Didn’t they execute a guy at the announcement? Like, right then and there?” If she had about three percent less brain-to-mouth filter, she’d crack a joke about how they were putting him out of his misery since his name was fucking _Dooky_ , but it seems really insensitive – like, _way_ too soon.

“Yeah, but that was before I’m pretty sure they died.”

She sighs, running out of things to say. “This is a terrible idea.” Then, a thought comes to her. “But I’m not letting you go alone,” she adds, climbing out of bed.

“Gaz, wh – you’re supposed to stay in bed!”

“And _you’re_ supposed to . . .” Her voice trails off as she winces in pain, leaning against the bed, unable to fully stand. Her eyes are open, and she’s glaring at him.

“ _No_. You’re not going on this fucking mission. You’re already hurt, you’ll – you’ll _die_!”

“S-so . . . will you.”

“Look, I know this is a bad idea, but if something happens, we’ll find a way out of it. We always have.” Dib knows exactly how flimsy his reasoning is, because truth be told, _he’s_ not sure why he came up with this idea. But it’s too late to back down now.

Gaz opens her mouth, as if to respond, but then her eyes roll back in her head and she collapses to the ground in a pile. Dib looks at his sister, horrified as if he’d just murdered her. “ _HELP_! PARAMEDICS!”

When the paramedics arrive, they lift her up and practically throw her back on the bed. One injects a syringe into her arm. “Painkiller,” he explains when he notices her brother about to attack him like a feral animal. “She’s fine, it’s just pain. How’d she get on the floor, anyways?”

“She, uh . . . she rolled out of bed.”

The other paramedic narrows their eyes. “Irkens stay perfectly still while asleep.” They shrug. “Ah, well. I’m not being paid to ask questions.”

“Oh thank God,” he sighs. “So are you _sure_ she’s gonna be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Hey, when she wakes up, could you tell her that . . . I’m sorry?”

“Don’t know what you’re sorry for or why you can’t tell her yourself, but who gives a shit.”

“Thank you.” He stuffs a few more Max Elixirs into his coat and heads out, deciding it’d be better to not look back.

~

“Hey, quick question, _why_ are these two coming with us?”

Zim looks at the two other Irkens, looks back at Dib, and shrugs. “I guess it’s because their SIR units are there, too? Zim isn’t sure. But we need all the help we can get.” While normally he’d pick a fight with then, he’s even less confrontational than he’s been since landing, weirdly enough. He’s _really_ worried about GIR, it seems.

“Just – just hers, actually,” says Tenn, a far cry from the smug invader who the siblings met on GIR’s tour. “I don’t have one anymore. Not since . . . you know.”

“You know, you don’t have to do this.” Tak’s tone is strangely soft, given what Dib knows about her.

“No! I want to help.”

The other sighs. “If you’re sure.”

Dib looks closely at the ship Zim managed to steal. There’s only one seat. “Could this be a problem?”

“No, we can all probably cram ourselves in there. I mean, your human documentaries about your ‘sci-fi’ shows that these situations are rather common, so you _should_ be used to this.”

“. . . Documentaries?”

“Well, most of them you call ‘movies,’ but yes.”

“Zim.”

“What?”

“Sci-fi movies aren’t real.”

The expression on Zim’s face is a direct match to a five-year-old being told the Easter Bunny isn’t real. Dib sighs and places his hand on his forehead. “Right. So can any of us drive this? I – I can’t.”

“Well, I’m not allowed to anymore, and I don’t think Zim is either, so maybe Tenn?” She nods in agreement, jumping into the cockpit. The other three pile in in the space around her seat where people probably aren’t meant to sit, the windshield closes, and the ship takes off – either she’s a really good pilot or Zim and Tak are really bad. Probably the latter.

“Hold on, why can’t you fly a ship?” asks Zim. “I mean, that’s almost the first thing an Irken learns in training.”

“. . . I’m twelve.”

A moment of stunned silence. “You . . . YOU’RE _WHAT_ –”

~

“So, wait, how old are _you_?” This conversation has been going on for most of the two-hour flight (though most of it has consisted of inane stammering), and Tak is sick of it and quite frankly ready to heap her fucking lid – Tenn is too busy flying to notice, which is probably a good thing.

“I’m a hundred and sixty. A twelve-year-old shouldn’t even be out of the _smeetery_ – Irk, smeets don’t even wear _clothes_ until thirty! Why and how are you my height?” He pauses worriedly. “. . . Are you sure you’re not a Tallest?”

“Yeah, pretty sure. How long do Irkens live? I need to do some math.”

“Eight hundred or so. Why?”

Dib pauses, doing the math he just said he’d do. “. . . You’re _sixteen_?!”

“No, I _just said_ I’m a hundred and sixty, can you not fucking hear?”

“I mean – like – to scale, since humans live to be about eighty, you’re like the equivalent of a sixteen-year-old.”

“Why are you using humans as a comparison?”

“ _Because I’m_ – never mind.”

“Look, if you’re insinuating _Zim_ is a smeet, then you’re also insinuating _my Tallest_ are smeets, which is considered _high treason_ –”

“THE TALLEST ARE SIXTEEN?! But that . . . that . . . explains a lot actually.” He pauses, thinking. “Wait, so then how are they married?”

“They’re _the Tallest_ , I’m pretty sure they can do what they want,” pipes up Tak. “And, Zim, how are we _not_ committing high treason? Like, right now?”

“This . . . this is different,” says Zim defensively. “GIR is important to me. He’s like . . . a very good . . . little metal smeet.”

“So he’s like your son?” Dib pauses, remembering his age. “Or, well, your baby brother?”

Tak narrows her eyes. “His . . . what?”

“Those are words humans use,” explains Zim. “I’m pretty sure they’re used to describe other humans from their same cloning tank. ‘ _Family_ ,’ they call it. Most of the time, ‘families’ even have their own individual Tallest, instead of all humans being ruled by one or two. I _am_ touched by the implication you think I’m GIR’s Tallest, though.”

“Huh. Weird.”

“Well, not all families are biologically related,” says Dib. “Sometimes people adopt kids, and sometimes a family is just _found_ , you know? A group of people who aren’t biologically or legally family can come together and see each other as such. And, uh, you’re kinda wrong about the whole ‘Tallest’ thing – see, those are usually called _parents_ –”

“This is a very nice conversation and all, but we’re flying into a very ominous looking space cloud and I’m a little more worried about _that_ ,” interrupts Tenn.

The other three look out the windshield in shock. There’s a very ominous looking space cloud in front of them, swirling in dark blues and violets that glow faintly, big enough so that they can clearly see there’s no way to go over or around it, although something about seeing what _could_ very well be their deaths just shuts off the group’s collective brain cells.

“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”

“GO OVER OR AROUND IT!”

“I _can’t_ , do you not have eyes?” She sighs and holds a lever tightly, her hands shaking, her skin turning a pale shade of green that matches Tak’s better than her own. “Well, I guess there’s only one choice left.”

“And what’s that?” asks Tak, suddenly regretting several recent life decisions.

“Full _fucking_ throttle, baby!” Before anyone can stop her, she pulls the lever back and the ship flies at warp speed into the cloud.

~

Dib wakes up with a groan. Everything hurts, but not too bad – it’s more like everything is kinda uncomfortable. The ground feels strangely _soft_ for some reason. He opens his eyes. The other three are lying around him, looking less like they’re asleep and more like they were beaten to unconsciousness with a baseball bat, or maybe a ham. They’re in what looks like a cave system made out of a swirling mass of dark blues and violets, glowing faintly, and – wait, hold on a minute.

“You’re kidding me,” he mutters as he sits up with a jolt and looks at the sign on the wall next to the hallway.

_Very Ominous Looking Space Cloud – 1F_

“The _cloud_ is a Mystery Dungeon?!” He groans and collapses back onto the ground, which makes a gentle _fwoomf_ sound as thin tendrils of cloud swirl out around him. He really, _really_ doesn’t want to be here. Why is he even doing this, anyways? GIR? Sure, he reminds him of a child and he’d feel _wrong_ letting him die, and they were on friendly terms back on Earth due to the fact that he was the actual worst at guarding Zim’s house, and he may or may not see him as the baby sibling he never truly had due to the fact that the age gap between him and Gaz is only one year, but he’d helped Zim with his evil plans too many times to count. He brainwashed children into moving the Earth, he freed Zim after Dib had finally captured him and was about to save the world once and for all, he – he ate a _baby_ , for God’s sake. So why? Is this his own act of rebellion against the Tallest, bitter at having himself and Gaz used as pawns to serve their empire, even at the cost of their safety? Maybe. But now is no time for deep emotional introspection. “Guys? Guys, wake up, some bullshit’s happening.”

“Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?” mumbles Tak, still half-asleep. She opens her eyes and immediately closes them again. “Tenn. Zim.”

“What?” asks Tenn, still very groggy, while Zim curls into an even tighter fetal position.

“We’re in a dungeon.”

Tenn’s eyes open a sliver, and there’s this look of indescribable despair on her face. “No.”

“Wh – _how_?” says Zim, slurring his words. “We’re not even on Irk 2 anymore.”

Dib resigns himself to this new ‘fuck you’ from the universe itself, sitting up again with a sigh. “So now what?”

“Well, if this _functions_ like an Irk 2 dungeon, there’s only so long we can wait here before we’re kicked out, so we’d better get going.” The four stand up, still shaken by the crash and none too happy about this, walking towards the hall.

“. . . Wait, _kicked out_? By _what_?” asks Dib, pausing in his tracks. The three Irkens look at each other, look back to him, and shrug before continuing their pace (as it turns out, that stupid little march isn’t specific to Zim). Dib follows reluctantly, muttering under his breath, “Cool. Great. Love that for us.”

~

The dungeon is a strange one, to say the least. Even if Forgotten Forest and Echo Cave didn’t look like a normal forest or a cave, they were still a forest and a cave, and therefore something you could actually walk through. But a _cloud_? A cloud consists of water vapor – or, in the case of a space cloud, maybe some other debris. You can’t walk on it. By all means, you _should_ fall through the ground to your death in the cold, dark abyss of space, having rightfully deserved it for being dumb enough to walk on a cloud.

This cloud, however, is different. Sure, it’s a bit difficult to walk on due to how soft the floor is, but it’s more like walking through a pit of those foam blocks at All About Kids than, you know, plummeting through something that was never truly solid. There are some parts where one of the four sink up to their thighs (mainly Zim, because he doesn’t think before doing anything) and their companions have to pull them out, but nobody’s _died_ yet, which is a miracle.

“This is . . . weirdly peaceful,” mutters Dib. They’ve found literally nothing so far, except for the stairs to the second floor, but aside from the lack of, well, _anything_ , the structure is the same as any other dungeon, with long, winding paths, big, barren rooms, and dead ends. “Where are all the enemies?”

“Look, I’m perfectly fine with not having enemies, and I’m not trying to jinx it,” says Tenn.

“Agreed,” adds Tak. “The sooner we get to MiMi and all those other SIRs, the better.”

“Yeah, but . . . something’s wrong,” he says vaguely. “I feel like the dungeon’s lulling us into a false sense of security so we’ll be off our guards when we _do_ run into danger.”

Tak waves him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. I mean, sure, Mystery Dungeons _are_ ambiguously sentient entities in and of themselves, and sure, they’re clearly malicious, having corrupted their inhabitants to attack anything in sight with the intent to kill, and _sure_ , no matter the current form, they _have_ been around for millennia and are indescribably wise and perfectly capable of manipulating us like that, but it’s not like–”

She’s interrupted by a high-pitched scream. _Some_ thing lunges through the wall, grabs Zim, and passes through the wall on the other side of the hall in one swift motion. The cloud settles back into its original form like nothing happened. A long silence hangs over the remaining three, broken by Dib: “Hey, guys, what the _fuck_ was that?”

“Well, there’s your enemies,” mutters Tak. “Happy now?”

“No. Not at all, actually. Where the hell did that thing take Zim? It didn’t kill him, did it?”

“He’s still on the team map, so no,” says Tenn, holding a strange futuristic device in front of her. She presses a button and a hologram pops out from it, with little icons of herself, Tak, and Zim in a map of the dungeon (they’re even smiling and everything).

“We’ve had _that_ this whole time?!”

“It only works on Irkens with PAKs and functioning SIR units,” she explains. “Since you and that weird goth Irken don’t have PAKs, and GIR isn’t exactly functional, the only member of your team it’d be good for is Zim.”

“Oh,” says Dib, with an air of disappointment in his voice. “Wait, how does it know the layout of the dungeons? We didn’t even know this place _existed_ until a few minutes ago, and I don’t think any of the other dungeons have been explored _this_ thoroughly yet, not even by us, and I think we’re like . . . the only ones who’ve regularly gone. Forgotten Forest was a mad dash to the stairs with evil squirrels, and we were more concerned with actually carrying out the rescue mission in Echo Cave.”

Tenn pauses. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Us and our technology are . . . _weirdly_ knowledgeable about Mystery Dungeons, and I don’t think any of us have researched them.”

“Oh, Zim said that back in Echo Cave. He also went on this concerning tangent about how everyone’s acting weird and he’s forgetting things – do you guys think that has something to do with the Tallest dying?”

“Well, first of all, the Tallest aren’t dead and spreading misinformation like that could get you executed,” says Tak. “And also, all of the SIR units are about to be destroyed and Zim got kidnapped. We have bigger things to deal with. Although,” she adds, “everyone _has_ been acting weird, and I’ve been forgetting things too.”

“See, back on Earth, this is what we’d call a _fucking problem_ , but you’re right. We can’t just wait here and talk.”

“If we get to the stairs, our party will be reunited, but if Zim dies before we get there, that won’t fix it,” reasons Tenn. “He’s just in the room on the other side of this hallway. I’m getting kinda tired of hearing him scream, and if GIR finds out he’s dead, he’ll be upset. Who’s gonna go help him?”

Immediately, she and Tak place one of their three fingers over where their noses would be. Dib groans. “Okay, _fine_ – wait, you can hear him?”

“Your antennae don’t even work?!” Tak exclaims. “What kind of Irken are you?”

“. . . None?”

“Oh Irk, I think he’s having a panic attack,” says Tenn. “He can’t fly an airship, his antennae don’t work, he doesn’t have a PAK, and he’s twelve. Are you sure we should send him out alone?”

Both look at each other before shrugging. “Yeah, sure, he’ll be fine.” Then, turning to Dib, Tak says, “Well, you, uh, have fun with what you’re doing. We’ll try to find the stairs. Please survive.”

“Can I at least borrow the map?”

“No, he’s in the room right next to us. You don’t need it. Plus, you have a far higher chance of dying than us, and if you die, I don’t want to lose this thing. The Tallest are a real pain about getting you a replacement, you know.”

“How long have you been here before me and Gaz showed up?”

“About two days. Why?”

“But . . . you know what? Never mind.” He sighs and begins to walk off, kinda slouched over like a depressed teenager who takes too long to write and has lost all control of their life, although that doesn’t really have anything to do with the slouching, it’s just bad posture. He pauses, realizing he has no idea which way to go and he can’t exactly walk through the wall (although whatever kidnapped Zim didn’t seem to have a problem with it). “Alright, which direction is th–” Before Dib can finish his sentence, Tak and Tenn sprint away from him at absolute max fucking velocity.

“It’s the opposite direction!” calls the latter over her shoulder. “Back the way we came!”

“Thanks!” he calls back, even though he feels the opposite of thankful. And, for the first time since he and Gaz arrived, he walks down the dungeon’s halls alone.

~

“You can’t do this to _ME_! I am _ZIM_! I am Irk’s _greatest_ _invader_ , and I’ll _DESTROY YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE_!”

All Dib really has to do is follow the yelling, although concerningly, he doesn’t hear any sort of response from the thing that took him, and his rival is only sounding more and more desperate – at first, it was just threatening to destroy _them_ , the “everyone you love” part is new.

Finally, he reaches the room, identical to every other room in this dungeon; the others had at least _some_ defining features, like the pond they kept passing in Forgotten Forest or the wall full of Echo Stones they discovered in Echo Cave. But no, this is the same swirling, infinite vortex of dark blues and violets and – you know what? I’ve described this already.

Zim isn’t locked in a cage or cornered by a monster or anything, he’s just yelling at a smaller cloud, which floats a little bit over his head. “Are you . . . _kidding_ me?” mutters Dib. However, he pays no attention to him. He seems terrified, despite screaming threats at a cloud, in which the power balance _should_ be pretty clear. “Come on, let’s go,” he says, walking over to him. “They’ll have GIR destroyed any minute now, and we need to–” Suddenly, as he grabs his hand, the cloud expands to cover his head as well. “ _Wh_ –”

~

He’s at court, using the word loosely. He’s standing at the defendants’ podium, next to Zim, who’s fidgeting anxiously. The furniture, walls, floor, the room itself, all appear to be made out of the same stuff as the cloud.

“How do you plead?” asks what I _guess_ is the judge in the situation. It’s a floating torso and head, naked but with no genitals and no arms or legs. It appears emaciated, skeletal almost, its skin a sheet-white with all of its blue veins clearly visible. Its mouth is constantly twisted in an unnatural grin, and its empty black eye sockets ooze a dark, inky liquid with roughly the consistency of motor oil. It leans lifelessly against the chair, and it doesn’t need to move its mouth to speak.

“ _Plead, plead, plead_.” Everyone in the room except for Zim and Dib echo the judge’s last word. Looking around, Dib can see all different sorts of aliens, although mainly Irkens. They have dull, lifeless eyes, and they all sport various injuries. Despite seeming clearly terrified, Zim still manages to yell threats, which is probably some sort of fucked up coping mechanism.

“You’ll rue the day you messed with _ZI_ –”

“If you behave yourself, we may just spare your miserable little robot.” The judge laughs, though its voice is so frail it’s barely audible and it quickly turns into a coughing fit. Listening closely, Dib can hear its breaths, rattling and wet in the way of the dying. Its laughter/coughing stops abruptly as it notices Dib. “Who is this?”

Zim notices him at the same time. “Dib? How did you get here?”

“I . . . dunno. What is this? Where are we?”

“Zim doesn’t know, either. It must be imaginary, a nightmare or something.”

“I assure you, we are very real,” says the judge, its grin somehow appearing even wider. “Now, let us hear the defendants’ cases. Invader Schmelborp, would you like to start us off?”

Wordlessly, a smallish Irken with no eyes walks up to the podium. Dib can’t tell what shade of green her skin once was, due to the fact that it’s blackened and charred. She opens her mouth to speak, and a piece of flesh sloughs off her jaw and crumbles to ash.

“You did this,” she whispers. “You _murdered_ me. You’re nothing but a worthless defect.”

“ _Defect, defect, defect_.”

“Th – THAT’S NOT TRUE!” yells the defendant, tears welling up in his magenta bug eyes. “ _ZIM IS NOT A DEFECT_!”

“But you do not deny that you murdered this poor Irken?” questions the judge. “I am _sure_ everyone else in this room has something similar to say. Everyone who died in the disasters _you_ caused, _Food Service Drone Zim_. Now, faced with the embodiment of your sins, do you argue that you deserve to live more than them?”

“I . . . I . . .”

Dib raises his right hand. “Your honor, if I may ask, _why the fuck is Zim in court_? I mean, I always imagined that this whole situation would end with somebody getting arrested, and I won’t deny that he _deserves_ it, since he tried to destroy Earth about . . . twenty-eight times?”

“I had nine other plans, but I just never got around to them.”

“You are _really_ not helping your case here. But anyways, we were in the middle of a dungeon and it was kinda important. We were trying to save his baby brother who’s also a robot from being executed by the state. We don’t have much time left, so if we could just be on our way–”

The judge suddenly sits up. “So you wish to leave,” it hisses, using its mouth for once. “Very well then. But first, you must defeat death.”

“I . . . _what_?”

Several spider-like legs burst from the sides of its torso and it hoists itself up, its body growing to roughly the size of a house and its legs growing to the size of tree-trunks. The walls fall away, leaving Zim and Dib on a platform of cloud, the podiums and the audience and everything else dissolved. “If you win, you will escape my world.” Its rough, light, hissing voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. “But if you lose, you will pay with your lives. Do we have a deal?”

“But what if we don’t _wanna_ fight?” asks Dib. Zim is curled into a fetal position on the ground, holding his head in his hands.

“Then – then you don’t leave, I guess. Fighting was the only outcome I wrote down in the script.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” A pause. “I mean, it’s _not_ fine, but I don’t think we get much of a choice here.”

“You do not.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Dib nudges Zim a bit. “I know that you’re having an episode and all that, but if we want to get out of here alive, we need to . . . honestly, I don’t know _what_ the fuck we’re doing at this point. I think we need to beat up this spider judge thing.”

“The judge is right,” he whispers.

“ _What_?”

“Why should Zim get to live when he killed so many Irkens?”

He doesn’t have a response to this. Up until a few days ago, Zim was trying to kill Dib and destroy his home, and Dib was trying to capture Zim to have him killed and dissected. With _that_ dynamic so close behind them, how is he meant to talk him out of indirect suicide via giant spider monstrosity? “Because . . . it was an accident?” he offers weakly, after a moment of thinking.

“That is no excuse,” calls the judge.

“Why aren’t you killing us yet?” asks Dib.

“You are clearly going through some shit right now, and it goes against my moral code to attack somebody who is not ready.”

“Ah. Thanks.” He kicks Zim, but only a little bit, even though in any other situation he’d love to kick Zim even harder. “Come on, we need to . . . uh . . . fight the judge? I don’t know what kind of court this is.” Still no response. “If we don’t get out of here, it’ll murder GIR. I think it has him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“What else would ‘miserable little robot’ be referring to?”

“Fair enough.” As if nothing’s happened, Zim springs to his feet and gets into fighting stance, his PAK legs extending. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Wh – _that_ easy? You’re just okay now?”

“No, not really, but you’re right. We need to save GIR.” Without another word, he yells some sort of Irken battle cry (come to think of it, why are they speaking in English at all?) and launches himself at it, landing on its back and tearing into its pale flesh with the pointy ends of his legs. Black blood, the same stuff that comes from the judge’s eyes, pours out of its wounds, and with a roar, it flings Zim to the side. He lands to about where he was to begin with, his PAK legs catching him.

“Can you fight?” he asks Dib, and before giving him a chance to answer, he mutters under his breath, “No, of course not, he’s twelve.”

“Just because I’m twelve doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” he protests. “We fought all the time back on Earth. Remember?”

“Zim still doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” He leaps back into the air, and this time a laser gun (the same kind Tenn had when Dib, Gaz, and GIR first met her) also extends from the PAK, shooting a beam of red light into the judge’s eye. And then he’s gone.

Dib has no clue what happened, just that one moment he was there, and the now he’s not. The judge turns its attention towards him, and he gets into this ridiculous fighting position resembling the default animation for the characters from one of Gaz’s fighting games (fists in the air, wide stance, bouncing slightly). Sure, he fought _Zim_ all the time, but Zim’s just one child-sized bug-thing, not . . . _this_.

The judge raises its front two legs, and an orb of dark purple, shadowy energy manifests between them. It throws the orb at Dib, who immediately drops his fighting stance and dodges it with a tiny scream, and he winds up face-first on the ground. Unlike the fight with 776, there’s nowhere to hide and no one to save him.

“You _idiot_ ,” hisses the judge. “Do you really think you can cheat death?”

“So, wait, are _you_ death?”

“Yeah. I am the equivalent of your humans’ ‘Grim Reaper.’”

“So that voice who saved me _wasn’t_ death, unless there’s more than one,” mutters Dib, who’s not been assured this hasn’t been some dying dream this whole time, too caught up in his current situation to realize that someone’s recognized him as a human. Then, to the judge, he asks, “If you’re death, can you tell what can or can’t kill you? Like, the _causes_ of death.”

“Yes.”

“Great.” He pulls the dark blue berry from Forgotten Forest out of his trenchcoat pocket. “Is this an Oran or an Oren?”

“Oren. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Okay. So . . . back to fighting?”

“Back to fighting, yeah.”

One of the judge’s legs slams down where Dib would be if he didn’t roll out of the way just in time. He scrambles to his feet, dodging several more attempts at crushing. He looks up to its face, having a sneaking suspicion where Zim went and realizing exactly three outcomes.

  * It won’t work.
  * It _will_ work, but everybody trapped inside will die.



He suddenly runs up to one of the legs, climbing it with an ability that he’s unsure is adrenaline, something to do with being an Irken, or just a talent he has that he’s never had the chance to realize. It makes a confused, animal-like noise as he reaches its shoulders. Careful not to get too close to the eyes, he throws the Oren berry at its face, which gravitates into one of the leaking, black sockets. It screeches horribly, its body crumbling to blackened ashes, and the weird platform fades away.

He’s in the dungeon again, the same room where he found Zim. This time, the cloud’s gone, and not only is Zim alive and well, but countless SIR units also litter the ground.

  * Whatever _that_ was. 



~

“So, uh, _what_ happened?” asks Tenn.

She and Tak found them like that, lying on the ground with all the missing robots surrounding them. Dib shakes his head, confused. “I . . . I dunno, man. We went to court and it was fucked up?”

GIR and MiMi have been reunited with their masters and are hugging them tightly, which is weird, because Irkens aren’t exactly huggers, _especially_ not Zim and Tak. The other SIRs stand in a military-like form, their expressions blank except for one at the head. “If I may speak,” says that one, “I would like to request the official sovereignty of SIRs. This incident has done nothing but prove that the Irken Empire cares nothing for us, and we would like to become independent.”

“I . . . _guess_? I mean, since you’re sapient and all that, it seems kinda wrong to keep you as servants, but I don’t exactly know how you’re supposed to go out on your own, since I have no idea where your ship is and you won’t fit on ours.” Dib pauses. “Wait, shit, where’s _our_ ship?”

“It’s parked outside,” says Tak. “So’s theirs.”

“Ah. How do we leave a dungeon without completing it?”

“Funny story, we’re not in a dungeon anymore. Or, well, that’s not right, it just . . . stopped _being_ a dungeon? It kinda just . . . faded away a little bit before we found you and Zim. Now we’re just on a cloud, but we’re still not dead, which is even weirder than if we were in a dungeon, since at least they have magic to justify all that.”

“Oh. Cool. That’s normal.” As if anything has been so far.

“Hey, so when the judge said that if we won, we’d escape its world, does that mean the _whole dungeon_ was its world?” asks Zim.

“Hm. Don’t wanna think about that.” There’s a pause. “Uh, so you were kinda gone when it said that, but _apparently_ , the judge was the physical embodiment of death. Now that it’s dead, what do you think’s gonna happen? Speaking of things I don’t wanna think about.”

“Either that fight was a test and it’s okay or nobody can die now.”

“I don’t think I want to know what kind of things happen to you,” says Tenn.

“Hey, can we talk about how the SIR units just declared their independence?” points out Tak. All of the SIRs except for GIR and MiMi look up at the four all at once with an almost child-like expression.

“Where . . . are you gonna go?”

“A new planet. If we can’t find one, we may just live on our ship. It’s working for the Irken Armada, after all.” The group turns around and marches off, all at once, and the other six look at each other before following.

They wind up in a parking lot made of cloud, with a sign that reads _Very Ominous Looking Space Cloud – Parking Lot_. Sure enough, both ships are parked there, and the SIRs all pile into one with military precision, presumably the one that was gonna fly them into a star (don’t worry, though, being in the dungeon reprogrammed it. Just so we’re clear).

“GIR, do you . . . want to go?” Zim sounds a little bit like he’s holding back tears, and somehow, that’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened today. Tak kneels down next to MiMi and squeezes her hand, asking the same question in their nonverbal way of communication.

The two look at each other, then back at Zim and Tak. “Nope!” chirps GIR, and MiMi nods in agreement. Their “masters” (or, more accurately for their cases, older siblings) sigh in relief.

“Farewell!” calls the lead SIR unit as the larger ship takes off. The others watch them go.

Tak sighs almost wistfully. “This is gonna bite us in the ass, isn’t it?”

Tenn climbs into the cockpit of their stolen ship. “Come on, get in,” she says; despite being happy for Tak (though not exactly for Zim), she’s not exactly thrilled about their situation being even more cramped. The five climb in, trying in vain to make themselves comfortable. Then they, too, take off.

~

Luckily for them, Tak programmed an IGPS (Intergalactic Positioning System) into MiMi, which, since she can’t talk, isn’t useful until they figure out how to connect her to the ship (Dib is the one who figures out how do it, only because it’s remarkably similar to hooking up a cell phone to a car).

“Turn left at next–” The robotic voice says something in Irken that Dib doesn’t get, but that Tenn apparently understands, since it doesn’t correct her when she turns left at the next hjkheowagfehgoregfuoregfyihregbfu (rough human pronunciation).

“So what happened to you guys?” asks GIR.

“A lot, but Zim is going to push it down forever and act like it didn’t happen.” He sighs, and in quite possibly the most normal voice Dib has heard him use, “I’m just happy you’re safe.”

“You know, I don’t think that’s healthy,” says Dib. “That _is_ something we should talk about.”

“Maybe later. We can’t trust that these two won’t take advantage of Zim’s emotional weaknesses and use them against him.” Dib turns to look at Tak, who’s ignoring the two of them and trying to strike up a conversation with Tenn, who seems to appreciate the intent but is busy driving. MiMi’s body is slumped against the wall, her consciousness currently in the ship, but GIR, who’s now trying to talk to her, doesn’t seem to get it.

“But I thought they were on our side.”

“Not anymore. We only teamed up out of necessity, and that necessity was to save GIR and MiMi. Now that they’re safe, we should be fully prepared for things to go back to the status quo.”

“. . . Oh.” He should’ve expected this, he reasons. After all, he knows Tak to be a ruthless, amoral killer who’s just as unstable as Zim and twice as dangerous, and Tenn threatened him and his sister with a gun for mistaking her for Zim. He knows exactly why Tak hates him (her grudge at losing her invader status motivated her to nearly destroy Earth), but the latter is still a mystery. “So, uh, what’s Tenn’s beef with you?”

“She thinks I’m a stain on her DNA,” he explains. “Irkens have no time for silly human _‘families,’_ but there is some status for PAK relations. Those who are related to those in power tend to be treated better than those who aren’t. For example, Tak was held in high regard during training due to being related to Sizz-Lorr, since Frylord is practically two steps away from Tallest.”

Dib nods. “You know, the more I learn about Irkens as a species, the more horrified I am, and I feel like a lot of things about you are explained the more you tell me.”

“. . . Zim is not sure how to take that.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“We’re here,” says Tenn. The ship’s stopped directly on the roof of council building.

“Tenn, what the fuck are you _thinking_?!” demands Tak.

“What?”

“You are _on the roof of the council building. Where the Tallest are most likely to find us_. You know, the Tallest, who’ll have us deactivated if they find out about this?”

She looks around her, eyes wide. “Oh. Oh _no_. I thought this was a landing pad.”

“ _HOW DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A LANDI_ –”

“Surrender now and nobody gets hurt,” calls the guard through the megaphone from outside.

~

“Look, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know _what’s_ going on.”

Dib is, for the second time today, in court. Tak and Tenn are standing beside him, and Zim, as per the restraining order, is fifty feet away. GIR went to check on Gaz, and MiMi is probably off committing atrocities somewhere. Both of the Tallest have blank, tired expressions, though not as bad as the morning’s announcement. “If anyone could explain why you’re here, that’d be great,” says Purple.

“If you would like, my Tallest, we could do another musical number,” offers Zim. “Dib, you remember the routine, right? And a one, and a two, and a one, two, three–”

“ _NO_. No, absolutely not. Explain it normally, please.”

“We couldn’t let you kill GIR,” blurts out Dib.

There’s a silence hanging over the room. “You couldn’t . . . let us . . . _what_?”

“You were going to destroy all the SIR units,” says Tak. “You made an announcement this morning that they’d all be flown into the nearest star.”

“Well, that _is_ the kind of unnecessarily over-the-top execution we’d order, but I don’t remember any of that,” says Red. “To be honest, the day’s been kind of a blank until about noon, but we’ve been up since . . . I dunno, way too early.”

“Do _any of you_ have _any_ idea how concerning what you’re saying is?”

The others pretend they do not hear him. “Since we have no idea what’s fucking happening, you’re all dismissed,” announces Purple, stealing the gavel from the judge (a normal Irken judge, not the spider thingy) and hitting it against their stand.

“Wait – really?” says Tenn disbelievingly. “After–”

“Don’t tell them,” says Tak, gently placing her hand on her shoulder. “Let’s not try our luck.”

~

For once, GIR actually has a functioning circuit in that little metal head of his.

When he gets to Gaz’s room, he doesn’t tackle-hug her, having been there when she was injured. She’s sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard, when he bursts in through the already-devastated window. “Hi, Gaz!” he practically shrieks, noticing the book in her hands. “Ooh! What’s that?”

She received the book from Skoodge, as a sort of ‘this-isn’t-an-apology-gift-but-I’m-sorry’ gift after she, y’know, got shot on his rescue mission, although the weird cryptic nature in which he delivered it (much like how Zim delivered her video game when he left, he threw it in through the window, though she could see him running away like a murderer at the scene of a crime when she looked out to see what was going on) piqued her interest. The cover is black leather (she doesn’t want to think too hard about what leather could be made out of on this planet), and the pages are thin, requiring delicate hand movements not tear them. Since it’s in Irken, however, she can’t read it.

But that doesn’t mean she can’t see the image on the inside cover – a shadowy blob enveloping a small, floating, cat-like creature that she can’t help but recognize.

“Get the guys in here,” she responds simply. “They need to see this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHDOIE;HFD;OREHF;UREHFEGF;REHGF;4EHWARFI4E'JPIE4'WHFIRE' HOLY FUCK I HAVEN'T UPDATED SINCE JANUARY
> 
> aaaaahhhh i'm sorry!!!!!!!! my laptop just Did Not Vibe for the entire month of februrary and the act is coming up and!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *collapses to the ground and does NOT get up*
> 
> also i DON'T know where the judge or the entirety of that scene came from. i was listening to the mind electric and the judge made itself real without my consent
> 
> uuuuuhhhhhhhhh idk how to finish this!! i love you


	6. Espeon and Umbreon

Once upon a time, there was a race of elemental creatures inhabiting this planet. They could appear as anything from cats to keychains, from foxes to fruit, and they all had strange powers, divided into types. These creatures were called, from what we can tell of the few documentations we found, Pokémon.

The Pokémon were, aside from a few bad apples, a mostly kind species. They loved nothing more than helping others and discovering new places. Despite not deserving it in the slightest, however, their world was plagued with devastating issues, either from the god-like subspecies of Pokémon known as Legendaries, like one supposedly named Darkrai, or other anomalies entirely, like the entity known as the Bittercold. And they were always saved by humans, a lifeform from the planet Earth, who’ve found themselves mysteriously turned into Pokémon. All of the known humans have a few things in common: they never remembered who they were, they barely ever talked if they could at all, and they wound up befriending a cheerful, outgoing “partner” Pokémon that was their opposite in every way.

The event that destroyed them should’ve been another “human turns into Pokémon and saves the world with the power of friendship” story, but went sour quickly.

When faced with a strange, omnipresent darkness and the imminent destruction of their world via Florpus hole, Mew, a Legendary who’s believed to be the first ever Pokémon, called upon two humans this time, a stubborn older brother and a clever younger sister, who were turned into an Espeon and an Umbreon.

However, with the inclusion of two humans, the formula went all wrong. They never found a partner, and their coloration was all wrong, being mainly blue and violet instead of pink and black, respectively. And unlike the quiet, heroic, kind humans of the past, these two were . . . not that.

Espeon was a very vindictive Pokémon, always chasing after those who were different and “wrong” in the fear that they were the threat out to destroy the world (being very genre-savvy, he knew there was _some_ thing out there), and Umbreon was manipulative, cold, and cruel. The Pokémon tried to help them better themselves, but they refused to listen, refused to change, refused to grow. While he was weak to the darkness, not standing a chance against it, she succumbed to it, betraying her brother and the entire world in a self-destructive revenge quest that only hurt her in the end, as well.

Mew’s plan failed and so did the humans. The world was swallowed by the Florpus hole, leading to the extinction of Pokémon. The end.

~

Zim frowns, looking at the end of the book to see if there’s a spot where pages were torn out. “What? That can’t be the end. What kind of smeets’ story is this?”

“It isn’t!” says GIR. “On the inside cover, it says ‘ _History of Irk 2_.’” Zim does so, and it does indeed say that, although it’s in Irken.

“Are you guys _sure_ it’s only been five days since you all moved here?” mutters Dib. Once again, everybody else pretends they do not hear it.

Gaz, meanwhile, is sitting upright in open-mouthed shock, her eyes open and glazed over as she stares at the wall. “Pokémon . . . real . . .” she breathes, and that seems to be all she has to say on the matter for the time being.

The team just kinda nods at each other like that one Kermit the Frog GIF, before Dib realizes something fairly vital. “Wait, what was that bit about the planet being swallowed by the Florpus?”

“Oh, we’re in a Florpus hole right now,” says Zim passively. There’s a brief moment of silence, but the effect is kinda lost when GIR starts humming his Peace Day song, being reminded of it after hearing the word Florpus.

“I . . . we . . . _huh_?”

“I actually made this one, so you _could_ say Zim saved the Irken Empire, since the Resisty is too cowardly to follow us,” he boasts, not in the least bit concerned. “It’s not actually that bad in here, just a little bit confusing at times. Things that didn’t exist before start existing and things that existed stop existing – you know, that sort of thing. That’s how we found the evidence about Pokémon for this book.”

“But it nearly tore the Earth apart!” protests Dib. “You were there. There was a big chasm, and we started shifting forms really fast, and we were all gonna _die_.”

“It’s just a rough transition, that’s all.”

“But _the Earth nearly split in two_. How did all your ships survive? How did this _planet_ survive?”

“Irken ships are certified Florpus-proof,” says Zim proudly. “And the planet didn’t survive. We’re actually only on half of it. I wonder what the edge looks like.”

“ _HUH_???”

“That’s why the trajectory is so strange. Don’t you sense the turbulence? With your antennae?”

“Pokémon _real_ ,” says Gaz again, helpfully.

Dib looks like he’s genuinely about to pass out. “I . . . okay! Alright! This is fine.” It’s not fine.

“Hm, hold on a sec, Espeon and Umbreon sound like our friends!” says GIR. “But, like, meaner versions, without the nice parts. They’re even blue ‘n violet ‘n everything! D’ya think they were sent back here as better versions of themselves to try again?”

“ _Pokémon_ . . .”

“Huh. Well, that’s an interesting theory, but probably not,” says Zim. “Zim doesn’t see a reason why they _would_ be sent back, since there’s clearly nothing wrong.” Dib suddenly stands up and starts to walk out the door. “Where are you going?”

“I dunno. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” He sounds like he’s on the verge of falling apart. “I mean, do I really have a say in where I’m going if I’m just a reincarnation of some selfish asshole who got the world destroyed, dragged back to the planet he failed because they apparently couldn’t find anyone better? Do I really get to choose my own fate?”

“Now’s not the time for an existential crisis!” Gaz suddenly leaps out of bed, nearly fatal wound be damned, and grabs him by the shoulders, eyes still wide and glittering. “Do you have any idea what this _means_?”

“We’re both just playthings of the universe and we don’t have a say in what happens to us in the end?”

“No, you asshole! We’re in _Pokémon Mystery Dungeon_.”

“We’re . . . huh?”

“I don’t know how I didn’t piece it together earlier,” she says, talking so fast her words blend together, still holding his shoulders in an iron grip that gets tighter the more she infodumps. “I mean, there’s literally Mystery Dungeons everywhere, and that’s like two-thirds of the title. Oran berries, Max Elixirs – they’re healing items in the main series, too! I guess _PMD_ kinda slipped my mind a little bit, since there hasn’t been a new game since Gen 6 – well, there’s _Rescue Team DX_ , and though it’s nice to know Nintendo hasn’t completely forgotten about the series, it’s still just a remake of the original games, and I haven’t really liked the graphics since they started using 3D animation. It’s like the equivalent of Disney making live-action remakes of their movies.”

“Wait, hold on – _stop_ ,” he interrupts. “So what you’re _saying_ is that we’re in some sort of . . . edgy _Pokémon Mystery Dungeon_ AU where Pokémon are extinct and you can actually die?” She nods fervently. “I . . . you know what? That’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened to us so far.”

“Don’t you get it? This is a _good thing_. Since we’re somehow in the universe of a video game I already know, that means everything isn’t so unfamiliar and we might actually have _some_ idea of what we’re doing.” She winces in pain, her eyes squinted shut again, now that the certified Special Interest Euphoria™ has worn off and her injury once again starts hurting.

“Please lie down.” For once, she doesn’t argue with him. “Could somebody please get some more painkillers?” Strangely enough, it’s Zim and not GIR who leaves, either to get the painkillers or to commit unspeakable acts of violence.

Dib sighs, flopping down in bed himself, trying not to cry out when he remembers a moment too late that there’s not a fucking mattress and his giant head hits the metal. “Still, though, Gaz, if we really _are_ just Espeon and Umbreon, does that mean _we_ were never here to begin with? Are we still us?”

“Course you are!”

“. . . Huh?”

“I may be a SIR unit, but I’m still me,” says GIR. “I have nothin’ in my head ‘cept for garbage and my body is the empty husk of an outdated SIR model, but it’s not like I don’t have free will! You think just ‘cause you might have existed before now means you’re not you? That just means you’ve been you for longer than you think you’ve been and you just don’t remember! You bein’ Espeon and Umbreon doesn’t mean you’re not Dib and Gaz, it means you two and those two are the same people.”

Dib pauses. “I can’t tell if that genuinely made no sense or if I’m just tired, but . . . thanks?”

The robot beams. “No matter what, you’re still you! And there’s nothin’ you can ever do to change that! So watch out!”

“. . . Wait, is this a _threat_?” Gaz snickers, as though he can’t possibly hurt her, even though we all know how this exact attitude went in the squirrel incident.

“Nope, it’s a warning! You may be _my_ friends, but when Master recognizes you, you’ll still be the same you from Earth! So watch out!”

“Wait . . .” Dib’s eyes widen. “YOU REMEMBER US?!”

“Of course I do! I couldn’t forget my friends! And I think on some level, you ‘n Master are friends too, but you don’t realize it, so you were always trying to kill each other. When he recognizes you, he might go riiiight back to tryin’ to murder you! _So watch out_!” He yawns. “Well, I’m gettin’ sleepy. Night-night!” And with that, he flies out the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *yoshi death noises* OK YEAH THIS CHAPTER IS SHORT,,,, it's really just the Obligatory Lore Chapter and it was too big to Not be its own chapter given the pacing bc. believe it or not i have Plans for this fic. they may not be very specific and i PROBABLY should've planned it before publishing this fic at all but hey. freestyle babey


	7. Going Solo

It’s 3 AM when Dib kicks down the door.

Of course, since he’s already inside the room, it doesn’t really go as planned, and the door isn’t actually kicked down, it just kinda swings off its hinges a little bit and hits him in the face with enough force to break his nose, if he still had it.

“What the fuck are you doing?” mutters Gaz, pulling her blanket over her head. “Hasn’t this room suffered enough?”

“Damn it, I was trying not to wake you.”

She glares at him. “I’m not even gonna grace that with a response.”

“Look, this is important,” he says. “They say there’s _something_ living in this new dungeon – they say it might be the soul of a smeet who disappeared two thousand years ago – I mean, I didn’t think Irkens _had_ souls – and I dunno how a smeet from two thousand years ago is haunting there when they’ve been here for less than a week, but maybe it came with the ship? Maybe it found a spaceship back on Irk or wherever and flew off on its own because it’s a baby and it didn’t know any better? Or maybe somebody wanted it _gone_ for some reason . . . but Irkens have generally enough of a moral compass to care for their young, so why?” He bounces a little bit, overjoyed at finally getting a chance to participate in his special interest. “Well, we won’t know until we ask it! See ya!” And with that, he leaves, closing the door behind him as much as he can.

Gaz sighs, lying down alone on her bed and trying to go back to sleep. While typically, she’d throw something at him, she’s actually a bit relieved that he’s acting at least _somewhat_ normal. Doesn’t make it any less annoying, though.

She can’t go back to sleep. Her eyes are open and glaring at the ceiling, as though it’s its fault. She hates this – like, _hates_ -hates this.

You see, while you _may_ assume that she doesn’t want to do anything, preferring to stay at home and play video games and eat pizza, that’s only when there’s nothing that really needs to be done. In her mind, nothing really needed to be done with Zim, since he was so much of a non-threat – and when he _was_ a threat during the Florpus incident, she helped Dib stop him. She also helped with Tak only because she was completely new, so she didn’t know if her stupid brother would actually be in danger or not.

And there _is_ something that needs to be done now. She needs to get back home. Here she is, stuck on this awful little broken planet with the only family she’s sure she loves, and if they don’t figure out a solution, they may be trapped here forever. But she can’t _do anything about it_ because of that stupid laser wound, and she feels horrible and useless and it’s eating away at her.

She’s not sure what to do, in the meantime. She picks up _History of Irk 2_ and thumbs through the pages absently, only really comprehending the cover image of Mew and whatever monster that’s threatening them. Maybe she should learn Irken. If they can’t get home, then maybe that’ll be a good use of her time.

Then a paper airplane flies in through the window. You’d think a paper airplane wouldn’t be able to break a window, especially not one designed and used by the Irken Empire, and you’d be right, but it’s not like they really have a window now, thanks to GIR and Skoodge. It conveniently lands on her pillow, right next to her face. She sits up and holds the airplane gently, like it might fall apart. She notices that it has sloppy, dark purple handwriting on it, and she unfolds it carefully.

_I’M WAR CRIMES. YOU CAN’T DECEASE ME, LASER STAB SMEET CHILD, BECAUSE YOU’RE BED._

_FROM, TAK =]_

It’s a very hard letter to comprehend, and it still is, but the reasoning as to why makes a little more sense when she notices the text on the bottom:

_This text was translated using Google Translate._

“Ah,” says Gaz, deciding that this might as well happen. She balls up the note, tries to throw it into the garbage can (it misses), and lies back down, covering herself completely with her blanket (she’s not quite sure why she has a blanket, but it probably has something to do with her being shot). She closes her eyes even tighter than normal and tries to sleep once more. Her eyes open.

“Y’know what? Fuck this.” She sits up, throwing the blanket off of her, and sits up. “I need to get out of bed and start _doing shit_ again.” Gaz tries to stand up, but lets out a sharp cry of pain and winds up back in bed. “Fuck.” Then she notices the syringe of painkiller on her nightstand and, since she’s not exactly thinking straight at the moment, unscrews the needle part and chugs the whole thing, grimacing at the taste – it tastes the way a hospital smells.

Nothing happens at first, and, to be blunt, nothing _should_. I condone nothing anybody does in this story, and drinking medicine that’s supposed to be injected will absolutely _not_ help you. It’ll do quite the opposite, in fact. If you’re reading this for good advice, I don’t know what to tell you, other than . . . are you like, okay?

Then she starts vibrating. Not trembling or anything, just vibrating at a rate that could shatter glass. She can’t feel any pain. She can’t feel much of _anything_. What she’s feeling is an emotion that is incomprehensibly, incredibly bad, but she also feels like she could kill God. Not entirely sure what’s moving her body because it sure as hell isn’t _her_ , she picks up a backpack that’s conveniently in their room even though nobody on the team has a backpack, stuffs it full of items that she and GIR stole on their first day here, and practically sprints out the door, down the stairs, and to the crossroads.

~

Gaz isn’t sure when exactly she showed up at the dungeon. She’s not sure of its name, what it looks like, or how long she’s been here, but she’s having a pretty easy time, mainly since everything living there is too afraid of her to try and attack. Everything’s a blur, and she’s simultaneously floating and sprinting through this place. To put it in her own words, she’s clipping through not just the floor, not just the walls, but the entire space-time continuum.

The medicine wears off after a while – not completely, so she still feels like she could fight the entire Irken Armada and win, but she’s no longer clipping through space-time, maybe just one or the other. She realizes, looking around herself, that she’s gotten exactly nowhere. She pulls up the team map and sees that she’s discovered literally everything about this floor, and she’s run through it about fifty or so times. She notices where the stairs are (she already found them, but she was too high to even notice) and begins to make her way there, slowing her pace only slightly.

Suddenly, a cold wind blows through the dungeon. An alert appears on her team map, the entire screen fading to black except for the red text:

_Something’s stirring . . ._

“Cool. Love how vague and ominous that is.” Despite having no idea what the fuck that could even _possibly_ mean, she feels like she should pick up her pace, and she does so. But the stairs are on the opposite side of the dungeon, and the wind is getting stronger. Another message pops up on her map:

_It’s getting closer . . ._

She’s full-on running now, though from what, she doesn’t know. For all she knows, this could be a scare tactic implemented in the device by the Tallest to keep Irkens from hiding out in dungeons forever. But somehow, she knows that’s not the case.

And then the wind grows unbearable. A third, final message:

**_I’m here._ **

She looks around herself frantically, despite seeing nothing. She laughs a relieved, tired. “So it really _was_ just an empty threat, huh? Nothing to worry abou–”

Then she sees it. Out of the corner of her eye, it stands there, a tall, shadowy figure. The only detail she can make out are its glowing white eyes. She stares at it in shock, her eyes open wide. A long, too long arm reaches out and gently rests on her shoulder as it hisses something in ancient, dead tongues at her. Its feels like a cold, numbing fog has settled over her shoulder.

She wrestles her arm free and backs away, stumbling and falling a little bit. Gaz tries to access her powers desperately. Her powers . . . why aren’t they working?

The shadowy entity gets closer, and she comes up with an idea. Out of her backpack, she pulls out a tan seed and a glowing teal orb – all of the seeds and orbs are identical, but luckily for her, this horrible nightmare creature is okay with her taking her time. Finally, she finds them: the Pure Seed and the Escape Orb.

She sets the Escape Orb on the ground and holds the Pure Seed between her teeth. Hoping to whatever god may be out there that this’ll work, she stomps the orb at the same time she bites down.

The entity looks at her with a look that can only be described as confusion as everything fades to black.

~

Somehow, she regains consciousness exactly where she wants to be, which is either on the peak or in the pit of this dungeon – she still has very little idea _where_ the fuck she is. Tak, who’s in the front of this room with MiMi, blinks at her slowly. “. . . _Huh_?”

“I got high and met my sleep paralysis demon. Let’s go.”

“Wh – what do you _mean_ , ‘let’s go’? I wasn’t expecting to actually fight you! I just, y’know, wanted to taunt you.”

“ _Why_?”

She shrugs. “Just one of those days.”

“Yeah, I get that. But still, I came all this way, so now I have to obliterate you.”

“Alright, fine,” says Tak, getting into battle position, spider-like legs extending from her PAK. “But first, could you stop doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“That stupid thing smeets do when they can’t get their way and they just hold their breath until the other person gives in. I’m _not_ giving in, I don’t care if you pass out or not.”

“But I’m not holding my breath.”

“Yes, you are! Stop lying! Your eyes are closed!”

“. . . What do my eyes have to do with breathing?”

“Is this a trick question?”

Gaz sighs and opens her eyes. “There. Happy now?”

“Like, about this or in general? Because the answer to both of those questions is no.”

“Damn. You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really, no.” And with that, she launches herself at Gaz, who dodges and throws a ball of dark, shadowy energy at her. It hits her in the head, but since it doesn’t really matter where you hit an Irken as long as it’s not their PAK, she doesn’t seem to care all that much. “Just give up already, you weird . . . goth . . . smeet!” she calls, not really sure what insult to use.

Gaz doesn’t respond. Her eyes start glowing and then so does Tak, a strange violet aura surrounding her. She lifts her into the air and hits her against the wall of wherever the fuck they are, and she gives out a shout of pain. She crumbles to the ground, and, with some difficulty, stands up again, spitting out hot pink blood. “MiMi!” she commands her SIR unit, pointing at her opponent. “Get her ass.”

Before Gaz can really tell what’s happening, the robot launches itself at her and hits her right in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Unfortunately for Tak, the medicine is still in mostly full effect, and she has no idea what the fuck it _did_ to her, since normally, her powers don’t manifest as black lighting coursing through her body that stores up power whenever she’s hit. But thanks to whatever was in that syringe, it does, and she casts a black lightning bolt directly at the Irken. You see, due to being biomechanical, Irkens are _very_ sensitive to electricity, so this seems to do the trick. Despite not hitting her PAK, Tak screams out in pain and falls down, not getting back up.

Gaz starts levitating towards her, a crackling noise as the dark energy courses through her. “What are you even doing here, anyways?” she asks. “I mean, ‘war crimes’ isn’t very specific, and considering what counts as a crime to Irkens, I’m pretty sure we’re all committing crimes on a daily basis.”

No response. She nudges her with her foot. “Wait, you’re not, like, _dead_ , are you?”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“. . . Huh?”

“ _I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO_!” With a newfound ungodly rage, her PAK legs, still weak from the electric shock, extend outwards and kick Gaz away. She stands up on them, even though they’re trembling and obviously unstable. There are tears at the corners of her eyes. “I’m the only janitorial drone on _this whole planet_! I don’t have any time to myself. I can’t do anything I want to do – the most fun I’ve had since we arrived is when me and Tenn explored that dungeon while Dib was off trying to save Zim, and even then, that was under the threat of MiMi’s destruction.”

One of Tak’s legs slams down on the ground, but Gaz rolls away right before it hits her. “Yeah, capitalism _sucks_ , I get that. But you can’t just go and hurt people who don’t have anything to do with it!” She blinks. “Jesus Christ, did _I_ just say that? What the fuck happened to me?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s _like_?” demands Tak, firing a laser beam at Gaz’s head, which misses terribly, probably because she’s not even trying. “All of that responsibility – the literal weight of the world on your shoulders! All because of something that’s not my fault! I’m only a hundred and sixty!” If you don’t know how Irkens age, that last sentence would be funny, but Gaz isn’t paying attention.

_Do you have any idea what it’s like?_

~

_The restaurant isn’t anything special – an old, greasy pizza joint/arcade with singing animatronics, obviously made as a competitor to Bloaty’s. Today’s the last day it’ll remain open, due to the murders of several children (don’t ask), and although Gaz typically wouldn’t want anything to do with it, it was Dib’s turn to choose, and he liked the whole space theme._

_Even so, though, it’s not a very good family dinner night. Dib is busy sketching out the cryptid he claims he saw (it was actually a stray cat with rabies that may or may not have bitten him), and despite claiming it’s his day off, Membrane’s still in a conference over his phone. Gaz can’t even enjoy her pizza – and do you have any idea how bad things have to be for her to not enjoy pizza?_

_“Dad, come on, you said you’d spend time with us,” whines Gaz, tugging at his lab coat sleeve._

_“Not now, daughter.” He smiles, though since both his mouth and eyes are hidden, it’s hard to tell. “You know, thank you for getting the three of us out here to begin with. If it weren’t for you, we would’ve forgotten all about family dinner night.” Membrane laughs. “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only thing holding this family together!”_

_But she’s only five._

~

“. . . Yes.”

“What?”

“I know what it’s like.”

Tak stops trying to kill her and her legs retract back into her PAK. “Oh. Do you . . . want to talk about it?”

“Well, considering you just tried to kill me, I don’t really think I wanna go into specifics. But I know what it’s like to have so much responsibility, and then you just kinda . . . lash out. At everyone. At everything. Even the people you love.” She smiles sadly. “It’s why my New Year’s resolution was to be nicer to Dib, even if it’s borderline impossible sometimes. I can’t just drive away everybody. Neither can you.”

Gaz half expects Tak to call her an idiot and shoot her right between the eyes, but instead, she just bursts into tears. “Oh God, no,” she groans. “I don’t know how to deal with _this_ , the pep talk was bad enough – I don’t think it can even be called a pep talk–” Without another word, she hugs her. “. . . What the fuck are you doing?”

“I didn’t really understand much of what Dib was saying on that airship, about siblings and found family and all that,” she says. “Is this what having a sister is like?”

“Well . . . y’know, I was going to say that there’s more to being siblings than attempted murder and then group therapy with no therapist, but come to think of it, that’s exactly what it’s like. But I already have a brother.” She pauses. “Wait, you can have more than one sibling. Oh my God, I’m an idiot.”

Tak sniffles. “Yeah. We both are.” Suddenly, she stops, stiffening up in fear. “Why . . . why is your dress wet?”

“What do you mean?” Gaz looks down. Although it’s hard to tell due to the dress being black, right on her stomach, where she got shot, the fabric glistens a dark brownish-red color. “. . . Oh. I think I ripped a stitch or something. Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“What?! You got _shot_! There’s so much blood . . . oh Irk, oh fuck, _it’s not supposed to be that color_!”

“Yeah, we’ve had this conversation before.”

“How are you _okay_? How does it not hurt?”

“Well, I drank a painkiller, and it might’ve replaced my blood. Dunno. Let’s get back to town.”

“I . . . okay. Sooner we get back to town, sooner we can get you to the medical center. Right.”

Gaz nods. “How do we get back, exactly?”

“Oh, that’s easy, you just gotta–” Suddenly, Tak begins levitating, her eyes changing from dark purple to solid gray. She’s reciting something in clicks and hisses – spoken Irken. Then everything turns to white.

~

Gaz wakes up to a total of seven people huddled over her. “She’s awake, she’s awake!” says Tak, and Dib lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Damn it, Gaz, the doctors told you to stay in bed. Do you have _any idea_ how stupid and dangerous what you just did was?!”

“I could’ve asked you the same thing yesterday.”

He sighs, clearly not willing to argue with his sister after he thought she was going to die for the third time this week. “Just . . . just tell us next time there’s something that needs to be done, okay? We could’ve taken care of Tak ourselves while you rested.”

“You were out monster hunting, and Zim and GIR were . . .”

“At the fun park!” cheers GIR. Zim looks like he’s seen the face of God and it was weeping.

“ _So much death_.”

Gaz looks like she wants to say something, but then thinks better of it. “Y’know what? I don’t think I wanna know.”

“But if something was _that_ important to you, you could’ve told me!” says Dib. “That ghost smeet could’ve waited. Even though I . . . _do_ really want to know more, and . . . I was _so close_ to contacting it–”

“ _Dib_.”

“Right. Sorry. But anyways, we could’ve apprehended Tak! I mean, three on one are much better odds than one on one, especially when you’re injured. We could’ve kicked her ass.”

“I’m right here.”

“Oh. Sorry, Tak.”

“Yeah, speaking of Tak being here, why the fuck are so many people in my hospital room? Just crowded around my bed, looking down like that one really bad camera angle from the _Little Shop of Horrors_ movie?” Looking around her, she can see Dib, Zim, GIR, Tak, Skoodge, Tenn, and MiMi. She can definitely understand Dib being there, and probably Tak and MiMi, since it was her encounter with them that brought her here, and Zim and GIR are her teammates. But she’s never really talked to Skoodge, she just helped save him that one time, and Tenn still very much hates the team. The more she thinks about it, the less sense it makes.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on her door. “Shit, the doctor’s here!” says Tenn. “Clear out! Clear out!” One by one, the others begin jumping out the window, and Gaz can only hope they’re on the first floor. She gets the idea that they’re not exactly supposed to be here.

Right as Dib finishes jumping (with some help from GIR, due to not having a PAK), the doctor walks in, who just looks like a paramedic with the word ‘DOCTOR’ scrawled on her uniform. “Well, I don’t know how you survived,” she says. “That was enough painkiller to make a sljdiehfirehfirh start seeing pink ndiewhefika.”

“ _What_?” She sighs. “Never mind, I guess those are just weird alien names. But then why would you leave the whole syringe on my nightstand?”

“Just wanted to fuck around and find out. But anyways, what inspired you to drink the whole thing and then go on a rampage?”

“Well, it’s a long story. Probably about 3,670 words, to be exact.”

“You know what? Forget I asked. Don’t – don’t tell me.”

“Fair enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh don't really have much to say abt this one lads! other than i wanted to focus on gaz a little bit and also tagf RIGHTS
> 
> it's not fucking tagr btw don't. just don't. i will go berserk


	8. End of the Beginning

And so, the days turn into weeks, and those into . . . well, not _months_ , maybe just one. There’s definitely a formula here, and it’s getting repetitive: somebody’s in danger, the team ventures into a dungeon to save them, they have all the teamwork capabilities of a sack of bricks, there’s a final boss, everybody nearly dies, and then the enemy’s defeated via outsmarting, dumb luck, convincing, or a stupid plan that has no right to work as well as it does. The only abnormality in the formula is Gaz’s injury, and even that’s mostly healed by now, with the power of Irken medicine, friendship, and dark occult rituals.

They’ve just gotten back from yet another one of these missions, with minor but plentiful injuries. They’re in Dib and Gaz’s room, with Dib trying his damndest to read _History of Irk 2_ for himself just in case there’s more that he missed (the book’s like two hundred pages long, there’s no way the whole thing was only seven paragraphs), Gaz controlling GIR with a remote control (it’s the closest she can get to video games, and he doesn’t seem to mind), and Zim just kinda lying on the floor face down.

“Zim thinks we might not be a good exploration team.”

Dib looks up from his book, blinking in surprise. “. . . _What_?” It’s not that he’s surprised by the statement, because obviously it’s true (which is saying something, given that they’re the _only_ exploration team), he’s surprised by the fact that it’s _Zim_ saying it.

“Haven’t you ever noticed that we never actually defeat our opponents with our Irken might? The resolution is always _really_ improbable and _really_ stupid.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed,” pipes up Gaz, who’s trying to teach GIR to fight, even though that won’t work because he’ll forget as soon as she stops controlling him.

He leans up and glares at her. “Zim _could use_ some words of encouragement right now.”

“You could.”

He begins to argue, but then apparently thinks better of it, flopping back down on the ground with a groan. “I just don’t know what’s going wrong.”

“Do you want a list?” asks Dib.

In response, he just bursts into tears. Gaz drops the remote, clearly exhausted. “Oh, for the love of – _two times in a row_? Are you fucking kidding me? Look, I barely knew how to handle Tak, and she’s at least a functional hu – _Irken_. GIR, you take care of this one.”

He walks over to his older brother, kneels down beside him, gently rests his hand on his shoulder, and cheerfully says, “We’re not dead _yet_!”

“ _But how long will that last_ , GIR? Luck runs out. It always does. And I don’t know if I want to risk it anymore.”

“Jesus Christ, where is all of this coming from?” Dib gives up on trying to read and slams the book shut. “Like, the judge thing I can understand, because it’s understandable to have a breakdown when confronted with the physical embodiment of your sins, but why _now_?”

“Zim doesn’t . . . I don’t know,” he admits. “I have all sorts of problems and issues, but I’m not _defective_ , it’s just that they’ve gotten worse since we arrived on Irk 2.”

This, of course, sends Dib flying into a nuclear rage, because why wouldn’t it. “AGAIN?! _AGAIN_ WITH THIS?! DON’T YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH OF AN _OBVIOUS ISSUE_ –”

“OH! OH! I THINK I KNOW!” GIR runs to the center of the room, demanding everyone’s attention. “What if we did _other things_ instead?”

There’s a pause. “See, the issue here is Zim having a midlife crisis at sixteen – uh, a hundred and sixty, and agreeing with his self-deprecation is the opposite of–”

“GIR, you’re a _genius_!” He ignores the protest, jumping to a standing position with his eyes gleaming. “What were you thinking we should do?”

“Uh . . . I dunno. Maybe, like . . . OOH! We could be a band!”

“That’s a great idea!”

Dib and Gaz exchange a look that seems to say, “It’s really not.”

“Alright! What should we call ourselves?”

“Music Band.”

“No.”

“Horrible Little Men.”

“No!”

“Motherfuckers Unlimited.”

“My Brother, an Alien, a Robot, and Me.”

“The Team.”

“ndojfb;oeab;owecoiewHNFIHEJFIEHIEJDPIEJF,R NV NVIKNHFIKREAFPRhnfiperHNFCPIE’fiewHFI.”

“ _No_! Also, what the fuck?” Zim sighs, not entirely sure how Gaz said that with her mouth. “GIR! Since you came up with this whole band idea, do you have any suggestions?”

He stays real quiet. Then, all of a sudden, sparks start flying out of his head. “ERROR: UNKNOWN_REQUEST. ERROR: UNKNOWN_REQUEST.”

“That’s perfect!” He yoinks a piece of notebook paper out of his PAK and writes down what’s apparently their name now: ‘ERROR: UNKNOWN_REQUEST.’ Then, he flips it over and writes some more. “Alright, Zim has decided that our first album is to be called . . . hm . . . _oh_! ‘THE VORTEX.’”

“All caps?”

“Of course. Now, what should our first song be called?”

“I think GIR’s broken,” points out Gaz. Sure enough, there’s smoke coming from his head and he’s singing a song with no lyrics in a voice that’s erratically going from high- to low-pitched.

“Amazing! ‘I THINK GIR’S BROKEN.’ This is going great! How do you write a song?”

The four just kinda look at each other for a bit. Dib shrugs. “I mean, you can’t just _make yourself_ write to fill a quota, or it won’t be any good. It has to come naturally.”

“But just because it comes naturally, that doesn’t make it good,” says Gaz. “Sometimes I feel like we’re living in some weird story that’s coming naturally but isn’t any good. Like, _why are we Irkens? Shouldn’t the whole thing about us being in the Florpus have been more obvious sooner_?”

“It’s a Florpus hole,” argues Zim. “Anything goes.”

“Yeah, but _still_.” She sighs, giving up. “But seriously, though, GIR’s broken.”

Zim finally notices. “Oh.” He grabs him by the shoulders and starts shaking him violently.

Immediately, he goes from teal to red again. “SIR, YES, SIRUHSVUH _SONG_.” Then he goes back to normal, giggling, and starts . . . ‘ _singing_ ’ loudly. Zim’s eyes light up, while Dib and Gaz look at each other in confusion.

“Hey, what . . . what’s he doing?”

“ _Singing_ , Earth-Dib-lookalike.”

“Wait, really?” asks Gaz incredulously. “I mean, when me and Dib heard that one song in Tak’s ship, we kinda assumed that Irken music was . . . _good_. Or at least not awful.”

“Foolish smeet-thing! Of _course_ it’s good music. ZIM wouldn’t start a band that makes _bad_ music!” He pulls three instruments out of his PAK, passing two of them out to Dib and Gaz and keeping a bass guitar for himself. “Now, I have decided that I’m going to be this band’s bassist. Gaz, you know how to play regular guitar, right? Of course you do. And Dib, that leaves you with the drums.”

“You fit . . . a _whole drum set_ in there . . .” Dib looks as though he wants to ask more questions, but clearly thinks better of it, sighing in defeat.

Gaz opens her eyes a bit, looking at the guitar scrutinizingly. “How’d you know I can play guitar? And why are we using Earth instruments?”

“Oh, they use these same ones on Earth? Weird.” He shrugs. “Zim supposes instruments are a universal constant, for some reason. Or maybe it has something to do with the Florpus. Oh! I almost forgot!” He pulls a microphone out of his PAK, handing it to GIR. “I have decided that you are to be our main vocalist and frontman. Zim can’t do it himself, since he’s already too busy with everything else.”

“But GIR came up with this whole band idea,” points out Dib. “And he named the band, and our first song, and he _wrote_ the song–”

“ _SILENCE_!”

Dib sighs, leaning against the wall. “You _do_ realize this came out of fuck all nowhere, right? And Gaz, how are we gonna get home if we’re in a band?”

Gaz looks as though she’s about to say something, but then clearly doesn’t know what to say, shaking her head in defeat. “Honestly, I’m almost used to this type of bullshit by now.”

“ERROR: UNKNOWN_REQUEST, ZIM HAS AN ANNOUNCEMENT!” announces Zim through a megaphone of unknown origin, standing on the bed, subtly implying he has an announcement.

“There’s four of us. You don’t have to y–”

“YES THE FUCK HE DOES!” He clears his throat. “Anyways, it’s getting late, and we won’t be at _full musical potential_ if we’re all tired. Good night! GIR, take us back to our base!”

“Yes, my master!” He grabs Zim by the collar of his uniform and flies out through what once could have been called a window.

The Membrane siblings don’t even have anything to say about this anymore. They just kinda watch him go, no window for them to remind him of, and look at each other, shrugging. “I’m gonna go to sleep. Maybe this is all just some sort of bad dream.”

“Feels like one,” says Gaz. “Like, one of those dreams that makes sense in the dream, but then you wake up and realize absolutely nothing made sense, and then you forget about it two minutes later.”

“Well. See ya in the morning, I guess.”

“Night.”

~

_. . ._

_. . . . ._

_My child, are you listening?_

_Listen to me._

**_You will listen to me._ **

_You mustn’t lose track of what guides you._

_You came to this world for a reason, remember?_

_“But what’s the reason?”_

_You must find out on your own._

_And, my child, if you fail, just remember: you can always be replaced._

~

Dib wakes up in a cold sweat. He checks the time – 3 A.M., though he’s not sure why Irk 2 is using the same time system as Earth. He sighs and tries to go back to sleep – no luck.

The words echo over and over again in his mind. “ _You can always be replaced_.” That same motherly voice, whatever entity that had saved him from falling to his death . . . he always thought she was benevolent, but now, he’s not so sure. Her voice had a cold, cruel edge, and she almost sounded as if she was on the verge of snapping. Was she the one who brought him and Gaz here? If so, why?

And if she _is_ evil or something, based on how coldly she talked to him . . . his and his sister’s fates are essentially in her hands. If she decided he could be “replaced” or whatever, but she only saved him because of something he needed to do, does this mean she could undo it and let him die? If she saved him by bringing him to this world, _is_ he even still alive back on Earth? If he went home, would everything pick up where it left off? Maybe he _wasn’t_ saved, and this is all just some sort of dying dream. The more he thinks about it, the more scared he gets, and as a paranormal investigator, he does _not_ get scared easily.

He sighs and gets out of bed, making his way to the drum set in the corner of the room. Maybe he can practice quietly until everybody wakes up.

~

“What the _fuck_ made you think you could practice drums _quietly_?”

Gaz has once again been woken up by her piece of shit dumbass brother, and despite her resolution to be nicer to him and her big ol’ speech to Tak about how she can’t push everybody away, she is exactly _this_ close to ripping his spine out and strangling him with it. He’s not even a _good_ drummer, which is more insult to injury than anything.

“I don’t know, I was just . . . thinking.”

“About what? Because I swear to God, you’d better start _thinking_ about your last will and testament.”

“I died.”

She blinks, because really, what are you even supposed to say in this situation? “You’re about to,” she says finally, after about fifteen seconds of processing what he just said and coming up with a good comeback, assuming he’s just having a mental breakdown, which is understandable, given, well, _everything_.

“No, I actually _died_. I went to investigate Zim’s lair after he left, all that was there was this huge pit, I got too close to the edge, and then I fell. I couldn’t even see the bottom. There was no way I could’ve survived that.”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“I know. And that’s because this almost motherly voice called out to me. I was floating in . . . the void, I guess, and I heard her voice and she said she saved me.”

“Wait, hold on. _Actually_ motherly, or ‘desperately-searching-for-a-parental-figure-who’s-actually-present-in-your-life’ motherly?”

“. . . Look, now is not the time. But anyways, I woke up because I think she just threatened to kill me.”

Once again, Gaz is fresh out of things to say. She gives Dib a thumbs-up and pulls her blanket over her head.

“No, I’m serious! She said I could be replaced and I’m scared. I don’t know how any of this _works_. If she decides that she doesn’t want me saved anymore, could she just let me die in the pit? And . . . _you_ didn’t die, did you?”

“I wish I did.”

“How’d you get here without her saving you? Can she just do this to _anyone_?”

“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Like, even a little bit. Are you sure that voice isn’t just some weird recurring dream you had?”

“How else would I have gotten here?”

“I dunno. Same way I did, I guess?” She sighs and sits up. “I was playing that weird game Zim gave me, and then it all kinda went to static. Then there was this black screen with two blue Irken eyes and the dialogue prompt ‘SAVE US?’ and the only option was ‘yes’ and then I woke up in the fuckass forest as a wretched little space bug. Y’know, something like that.”

“You . . . you do realize that that makes even _less_ sense, right? That sounds like something out of a shitty creepypasta. And now I have even more questions.”

“GOOOOD MORNIN’, GUYS!” Without any warning whatsoever, GIR flies in through the window frame, still carrying Zim the same way he did the previous night, dropping him unceremoniously on the ground before enveloping Dib and Gaz in a tackle hug that probably breaks at least a few bones of theirs.

“Wh – _it’s still not even 4 A.M._ ,” protests Dib.

“We heard you talkin’, so it’s morning now!”

Gaz glares at her brother and mouths the words, “You did this.”

“Greetings, COWARDS!” announces Zim, who’s still in a crumpled heap in the center of the room. “Zim has come to the conclusion that he cannot write music.”

“What? But didn’t GIR write a song yesterday?”

“He did! But Tenn threatened to kill us both if we didn’t shut up.” He scoffs. “ _Apparently_ , she and Tak were having ‘a moment’ and it’s ‘rude to invite yourself in as the live entertainment’ and ‘even less acceptable when it’s somebody’s house and not a restaurant.’”

“She made up brand new swear words juuust for us!”

“I _would’ve_ gone to the Tallest’s house after that, but they were all . . . _weird_ again. Like something else was controlling them but doing a terrible job. That, plus the personality changes, the memory loss throughout so many Irkens . . . I dunno what’s going on. It’s probably fine, though.”

“I am literally about to go apeshit,” says Dib flatly, not bothering to mention that Zim was lucky they _weren’t_ fully conscious or he would’ve been deactivated, as per the restraining order.

“Anyways, have Zim’s loved and trusted bandmates come up with any songs yet?”

“. . . No, we just woke up. _Some_ body thinks this ominous voice he dreamed up is going to kill him and decided that he was going to play the drums about it.”

“Fuck you too, then,” mutters Zim. “HOWEVER! Dib! Great job on practicing your music. Zim understands that we all lack musical experience, skill, or talent, but we’ve decided to press onwards anyway! You’re a good teammate, a good bandmate, and a good friend . . .”

“Oh, uh, thanks–”

“. . . Way better than that _human_ Dib could’ve ever hoped to be.” Dib just kinda glares at him for a moment before flipping him off. “Your gestures mean nothing to me. Anyways! Let’s practice. Everyone, to your instruments! It’s time to _improvise_.”

~

“Alright, maybe improvising wasn’t Zim’s greatest idea.”

Dib and Gaz hurriedly move furniture items to blockade the door, and Zim, for some reason, has several planks of wood, a hammer, and nails to board up the windows. GIR has been powered off for the moment, since he didn’t know when to stop singing.

Irkens, as it turns out, are _not_ a fan of improvisation. Especially not of the musical variety. Especially not at 5 in the fucking morning.

“Yeah, gee, you _really_ think so?” says Gaz, precariously stacking a nightstand on top of her bed. “God. It’s always _something_ , huh? We can’t just have a normal day? We can’t just learn how to play instruments and write songs and play them? Like normal people?” Zim is evidently too embarrassed to respond, and, in case you forgot, this is an Irken with literally no shame, so that’s saying something.

“Alright, I think that’s good,” says Dib. The furniture seems to be holding the door steady, no matter how hard the crowd tries to get in – somebody even shoots it with a laser, and it _still_ doesn’t budge. He sighs and sits down. “Now what?”

Zim shrugs. “Just wait it out, I guess?”

“How long until everybody leaves?”

“Zim . . . isn’t sure. But I’m sure the Tallest will help us eventually!”

“You just said they’re possessed or something,” points out Dib, deciding that Zim probably isn’t ready to hear that the Tallest would sell his soul for a single corn chip.

“Fuck, you’re right.” They all sit in a circle in the middle of the room, brainstorming. “Oh! Maybe we could power GIR back on again and he could take care of them?”

“He’s only one robot.”

“Yeah, but he has super strength and no moral compass.”

Gaz looks like she’s about to argue, but then realizes that if GIR was built by the Irken Empire as a servant for Zim, he probably _doesn’t_ have a moral compass, and naivety doesn’t mean innocence. He’s like an amoral baby monster. Of course, it’s not like anybody else they’ve met is much better – even Skoodge decimated an entire planet at one point. “Alright. I guess that could work.”

Dib hands GIR to Zim, and he pulls his antenna. His dull gray eyes start glowing teal again, and he grins.

“GIR! We need your help,” commands Zim. “You see those people outside? We need you to–”

“There’s a trap door under us right now!”

“. . . _What_?”

“Mm-hm! It leads into a dungeon. We could use it as an escape route!”

“Why have you never told us this before?!” demands Gaz.

GIR shrugs. “Just wasn’t important.”

“So, wait, ‘under us’ as in we’re sitting on it right now?”

“Yep!” He hums sweetly, doing a little wiggly dance thing. “In fact, the floor’s gonna give way in three, two, one . . .”

“ _WHAT_ –”

~

“Oh, I swear to fucking God.”

They’re in a cave. Nothing special, like Echo Caves, it’s just a normal cave system, like one you’d find on Earth. And, just like one you’d find on Earth, there’s some manmade (or, I guess, Irkenmade) structures, only these are more obvious since they’re that same ugly shade of hot pink. There’s a rickety-looking sign on the wall that reads:

_Evil Basement – B1F_

“No,” mutters Zim, curling up in a fetal position. All four of them are on the ground after that fall, except for GIR, who’s in no danger because that dude can fly. “Not again.”

“You know what? Let’s just go,” says Gaz, standing up and beginning to walk away. “The sooner we can leave this place, the better.”

For once, for just fucking _once_ , they agree to go through a dungeon without starting an argument.

~

The hallways are thin, so thin that at some points, the team needs to walk sideways to get through. There’s no enemies, no items, and when they reach the first flight of stairs, it’s not the ancient-looking stone stairs like the ones from other dungeons, they’re the same hot pink Irken steel as the other structures.

“Are we _sure_ this is an actual dungeon?” asks Dib, trying to break the silence. “I mean, that sign looked awfully makeshift. And what kind of dungeon name is Evil Basement?”

“What kind of dungeon name is Very Ominous Looking Space Cloud?” retorts Zim.

“Yeah, but that _wasn’t_ a dungeon, was it? That was like . . . the judge’s own personal little pocket hell dimension, right? I thought that was the conclusion we came to.”

“Maybe it was the one _you_ came to.”

“Can we shut up and move it along?” snaps Gaz. “We don’t know how long the defenses from our room will last, but my guess is probably not long, and when everybody gets in, they’ll see the pit in the floor and either assume we’re dead or follow us. And I’d _really_ like to be out of the way before they make that decision.”

“Ooh! Hey guys! I found the stairs!” GIR points to a set of stairs, not metal, but old, wooden, and looking like they could give way at any given moment. His other three teammates just kinda give him this universal ‘I don’t trust that’ look.

“Alright, sure, fuck it, if we die then we die,” says Zim finally, making his way up the stairs. They make some very disconcerting creaking and groaning and gut-wrenching screaming noises, but they seem to be holding up just fine, which is good. GIR cheers and follows him up, while Gaz looks at Dib, shrugs, and follows them before he can really question the wisdom of all four of them going on _those_ stairs at the same time. Not wanting to be left behind, he sighs and follows suit.

~

“Wait, so is this it?”

They’re in a big, spacey room with a stage and what’s seemingly a place for an audience, even though it doesn’t look much better than the cave. There’s a big banner above the stage that reads:

_M **usic** H **all**_

“Wow. I think this is the shortest dungeon we’ve ever gone through,” says Dib, referencing the fact that this is the shortest dungeon sequence I’ve written.

Suddenly, the lights turn off in the audience, leaving only the stage in the spotlight. A microphone, a guitar, a bass, and a drum set that most assuredly weren’t there before appear on the stage. Then, more lights turn on, illuminating the team and a path directly from where they’re standing to the stage.

“Are those . . . _our_ instruments?”

“They want us to play a song for them!” says GIR confidently, running up to the stage and taking his spot behind the microphone (which is, strangely, at exactly his height level).

“Cool. Why?”

“Yeah, _I_ wouldn’t want us to play a song for us.” Still, though, the other three make their way onstage, standing behind their respective instruments. All of the lights illuminating the stage shut off except for four colored lights focusing on each of them; blue for Dib, violet for Gaz, magenta for Zim, and teal for GIR.

The four look at each other, confused and, quite frankly, a bit concerned. “We still don’t have any songs written,” points out Zim.

“We could do a cover!”

“How ab–”

“Dib, I swear to _fuck_ , if you say Lemon Demon, I will personally murder Neil Cicierega and it will be your fault.” He stops talking and looks down, ashamed.

“Let’s just improvise.”

“Oh _God_ no. Do you not remember how that went? Like, thirty minutes ago?”

While Zim actually takes somebody else’s advice for once, GIR, for some reason, pretends he does not hear her and starts singing. Then, before they can talk him out of it, Zim starts playing his guitar (and he was _so close_ to almost making a good decision kinda). Gaz sighs, deciding this might as well happen, and starts playing _her_ guitar.

“You guys, no,” protests Dib. They don’t sound _that_ bad, though. Just . . . incomplete. And then, in an incident that honestly can’t be called weird by their standards at this point, they start levitating off the ground, their eyes glowing in their respective colors. Dib looks at them, bewildered.

The audience is full now, though he can’t tell what any of them are – it’s like every time he tries to look at them, their forms shift and change to the point of incomprehensibility. They’re chanting in a long-dead language he doesn’t understand, but their message is clear: _Play._

With a deep, shuddering breath, he sits down at the stool behind his drum set and starts playing. The music is almost therapeutic in a way. He feels as though everything will be alright. He feels happy, blissful, euphoric, carefree. He doesn’t really register that _he’s_ floating now, too.

The audience gets up and walks towards the stage. He looks toward his teammates in confusion and fear. Zim and GIR don’t seem to notice, but Gaz’s stare is transfixed on the banner hanging above the stage, where the letters concealing the original message have fallen away.

_Monster House_

“Is that bad?” he asks. Or maybe he doesn’t ask. He’s not sure.

“Very.”

The audience is getting closer, but the team is still suspended in the air. Dib struggles to move. It’s no use. Even with her powers, Gaz isn’t having any better luck, and Zim and GIR still don’t seem to realize anything is wrong – well, GIR might, but he doesn’t seem to care. Maybe he wants it to happen. The audience’s movement is slow and shuffling, like zombies. They climb onto the stage. They reach out, trying to grab onto the team, to pull them down, to kill them, and–

~

_It appears I have overestimated you, human child._

_I may have to move things along quicker than they would on their own._

_You are not here to play games._

_You are not here for increasingly ridiculous side quests._

_This is your last warning._

_This is the end of the beginning._

~

There is no dungeon underneath Dib and Gaz’s room.

They lie on the dirt-and-rock ground in the basement, barely conscious and injured from the fall. They all look at each other – they quickly dismiss the idea it was a dream, since everybody seems to have had the same experience. They don’t talk about it, however. Nobody wants to.

With the help of Zim’s PAK legs and GIR’s ability to fly, all four manage to leave the pit.

“So . . . should we go to the medical center or something?” offers Dib, breaking the silence. “We’re probably hurt, and me and Gaz don’t have anywhere to sleep now.”

Zim nods absently. “Yeah. Yeah, probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am once again apologizing for the Wet N Wild update schedule, i've been busy documenting my slow descent into madness and leaving the journal entries lying askew around my home so players will later begin to piece together what happened during the quarantine of 2020. i Cannot promise my updates will ever get more consistent. i am sorry


	9. Definitely a Real Expedition

“Why are we doing this again?”

The two of them are on the roof of the council building, Dib dangling an inconspicuous-looking listening device in through a convenient hole in the ceiling. “We need to know what they’re saying, Gaz,” he tells her. “We need to find out why everybody’s acting so weird. I’m tired of just sitting around and watching it happen. Maybe they know something we don’t.”

“I don’t think they know what day of the week it is.” He makes a shushing motion and begins listening.

There’s not actually a council meeting taking place – Dib saw the Tallest sneak into the building from the fire escape, except they weren’t really sneaking because they were still moving in that same, weird, puppet-like motion, and also there’s really not that many tall Irkens who can levitate (they were even stacked on each other’s shoulders while wearing a trenchcoat, though usually, that’s supposed to go the other way around and it only served to make them look more suspicious). He’s not sure why they picked the council building, though. Maybe they live there.

There’s a moment of silence from inside, and for a moment, the siblings wonder if their listening device is faulty. Then, finally, “Well, now what?”

“I dunno, Pur.” Red sighs in defeat. “Do you think we’re sick? Like, maybe the stretching process did even more damage than we thought.”

“You don’t think it’s a PAK bug, do you? If it’s just our bio-bodies, that’s probably okay, but if our PAKs are malfunctioning . . .”

“Look, I _really_ don’t know, but how about we focus on something we _can_ handle right now? We don’t need any additional problems, so if we get rid of Zim and his friends, then we’ll be able to take care of this without living in fear the whole time. So what do you say we–”

“Kill them?” says Purple with a little too much enthusiasm.

“But then he’d kill _us_. It nearly happened with this whole stupid Florpus thing, and he didn’t even _know_ we were trying to murder him then.”

“So then what’s your plan?”

Red leans in and starts whispering to Purple, though not in his ear because Irkens don’t have ears. Somewhere around the antennae region, I guess. Don’t ask how Dib and Gaz can see this.

“But that’s not _permanent_. They’ll come back.”

“And when they do, things’ll be better and we’ll be able to get rid of them for good. We’ll get through this, okay? I promise.”

“. . . I guess if we’ve survived _this_ much, we should be fine.”

“Mm-hm. We’ll be okay. Perfectly fine. Nothing will go wrong.”

“Okay, I feel like you’re tempting fate at this point–”

“Everything will go great. Nothing bad will ever happen. _Ever_.”

“Alright – hey, is that a microphone dangling from the ceiling?”

~

Zim, as it turns out, doesn’t have a window anymore either, as Dib and Gaz find out when GIR comes to pick them up. He’s awake, even though it’s like four in the morning, and he doesn’t seem surprised at all to see his robot/little brother carrying his teammates (who are dressed in full spy gear) in through the window. By Irken social conventions, this is normal, which explains a lot about what’s happened thus far. “Hey.”

“Zim, you need to listen to us,” says Dib, hyperventilating slightly and still reasonably panicked. “The Tallest–”

“Oh, it’s funny you should mention them!” Zim doesn’t even let him finish his sentence. “They just messaged me this morning – I figured it was about time they contacted me, as they haven’t since our mission in Echo Caves. I knew they couldn’t ignore the mighty ZIM forever!”

“Y’know, if you _consistently_ acted all weirdly nice, I’d be less confused than I am now. You act like how you were on Earth but only sometimes. It’s freaking me out.”

Zim’s antenna twitches. “What’s she talking about?” he asks Dib in a normal voice.

“It doesn’t matter. The Tallest really, _really_ hate you and they want to get rid of us.”

He scoffs. “Foolish teammate, of _course_ they don’t! The three of us have been friends since we were smeets. And besides, if they _really_ hated Zim, they wouldn’t be sending us on an expedition!”

“I . . . huh?”

“Read it and weep.” He pulls a letter out of his PAK and hands it to Dib smugly. “No but please, actually read it. I’m not a hundred percent sure what it says – GIR read the important parts out loud, but I want to know the whole thing. And I’m not sure why you’d be weeping – you know what? Forget it.”

_Dear Team Who Still Doesn’t Have an Official Name Yet,_

_We’re sending the four of you on an important mission to ~~Earth~~ ~~Foodcourtia~~ ~~Remnant~~ the edge of Irk 2 ~~? yeah that sounds good~~. We need you to go and explore because (REASON PENDING, PUR PLEASE DON’T SEND THIS LETTER UNFINISHED). This is definitely a real expedition. Good luck, have fun, don’t come back for a while or we’ll deactivate you._

_Your Almighty Tallest_

“. . . Yeah, something’s up here,” says Dib after reading it out loud.

“How’d they get the letter written and sent so _fast_?” Gaz wonders out loud.

Zim doesn’t seem to notice how suspicious literally everything about this is. He yoinks the letter out of Dib’s hands and clutches it to his chest, eyes glittering. “Aren’t you excited? It’s actually an _expedition_! I didn’t know those were real! I thought they were just made up, like Earth things such as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles.” He snaps out of it, clears his throat, and smirks at Dib. “See? Zim _told_ you they don’t hate us. They even told us to have fun.”

“Did you miss the part about deactivation?”

“Ah, they always make jokes like that.”

Dib doesn’t respond, taking a moment to process that if Zim reads every threat made by the leaders of an intergalactic empire as a joke, the four of them may be thoroughly fucked.

“When are we goin’?” asks GIR, bouncing up and down at a frequency that could shatter glass. “When are we goin’? When are we goin’? When are we goin’?”

“We’re not _ready_ yet, GIR,” says Zim. “Why don’t you go and get some supplies at Sizz-Lorr’s shop? Take Dib with you, and for the love of Irk, _don’t_ commit a heist this time.” He pulls a few coins out of his PAK and hands them to him. “Here’s some moneys.”

“What are you and Gaz gonna do?”

“If we’re going on an expedition, we may as well have some allies. I have sent out formal requests to every inhabitant of Irk 2, and Zim thought the two of us might ‘greet’ them in person if they choose to ignore us – of course, it’s not like we _need_ help, but . . .”

“We need help?”

Zim sighs, thinking about how many times they’ve all nearly died. “. . . Yeah.”

~

Almost every single Irken they meet slams the door right in their face. If they don’t do so before Zim and Gaz decide to fight them, the pair wind up getting their asses handed to them – well, Zim does, anyway. Gaz _could_ do more to help him, but she’s decided not to. She only promised to be nicer to _Dib_ , after all, and considering how many times he’s nearly killed him, she reasons that this counts as being nice to her brother.

“Well, this has gone less than ideally so far,” he comments, holding a bag of frozen gummies over his black eye. “Luckily, Zim has saved the three most likely to join our cause for last!”

“And they are?” Somehow, Gaz doubts the accuracy of this, since he’s said that about almost everyone.

“Invader Skoodge, Invader Tak, and Invader Tenn.”

She doesn’t say anything, hoping that he’ll be somehow able to interpret her disapproval nonverbally. Skoodge, at least, will probably join, because he has the backbone of a chocolate éclair, but while Tak might not try to kill _her_ after the progress they made, there’s no way she’ll join Zim, of all people. Tenn is almost out of the question entirely.

He evidently doesn’t interpret her disapproval, as he approaches Skoodge’s door without a sudden epiphany about everything he’s doing wrong. As it was with everybody else, he doesn’t knock, his PAK legs extending and ripping the door off its hinges. “ _ZIM HAS ARRIVED_!” It’s honestly a wonder no one’s called the authorities yet.

“Hey, Zim,” says Skoodge nonchalantly, who’s been curled up in a fetal position in the corner of a room, clearly unaffected by the sudden breaking-and-entering. If he’s Zim’s friend, Gaz reasons, and has been for a while, he must be used to this by now. She feels a sudden pang of sympathy in her chest. “What’s up?”

“We’re going on an expedition, a great journey the likes of which have never been seen before, a truly unforgettable adventure–”

“The Tallest want us gone for an undisclosed amount of time and Zim wants you to come with us for some reason.”

“Gaz.”

Skoodge shrugs and stands up. “Sure thing.”

“I knew I could count on you! Make sure your things are packed by this afternoon.”

“When in the afternoon?”

“It’s a secret. Now, Gaz, let’s move on to the next potential ally!” He then proceeds to absolutely bolt out – well, not the door, but where the door used to be. Gaz sighs dramatically and follows him.

“Alright, so it’s Tak next, right?”

“Yes! And she conveniently lives right next door.”

“Wow. Everything has been either really convenient or really inconvenient so far. Like, it’s either really easy or full-scale disaster. Why do you think that is?” Let’s not question that, Gaz.

Zim ignores her, both because he doesn’t really have anything to say and because they’re at Tak’s house now (well, _house_ is a bit of a stretch, it’s more like a college dorm room but without the college and with child soldiers, imperialism, and various war crimes). He prepares to rip her door down as well, but Gaz grabs his arm, holding him back. “She will absolutely kill you. Here, just–” She huffs angrily and shoves her way in front of him, knocking on the door.

There’s a muffled scream from inside. Then, after at least thirty seconds, Tak answers, bags under her eyes. “What . . . the fuck do you want?”

“We’re–”

“Don’t start with your ‘back-of-DVD-case movie review’ type bullshit. It’ll make her want to go less.” Gaz clears her throat. “We’re going on an expedition that’s really just an excuse from the Tallest to get rid of us, and we were wondering if you’d like to come along.”

She sneers. “With _Zim_? Look, goth-smeet, I like you, but he could die for all I care.”

“It’ll get you away from your janitorial duties.”

Tak thinks about this for a moment. “Fuck, you make a good point. Fine, I’ll go, but only if you minimize my interaction with him as much as possible.”

“It’s a deal,” says Gaz, shaking her hand as if they’ve made a good business deal and not a really bad decision. “Pack your things, we’ll be leaving . . . sometime in the afternoon, I dunno. But we won’t leave until everybody shows up.”

Zim and Gaz walk away as Tak shuts the door behind them. “As much as it pains me to say this, you may be better at this _social interaction_ thing than Zim,” he admits. “But, well, I’ve got one Irken to join our cause and you’ve got one Irken to join our cause. We’re practically even, except for the fact that I’ve gotten us beat up on numerous occasions, which is a negligible fact.”

“So let me guess, Tenn lives next door to Tak?”

“Eh? Oh no, she lives up on that mountain over there.” He points towards a pastel pink mountain, with a single one of the Irken dorm rooms resting precariously on its peak.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

~

“I never thought I’d say this, but GIR, _what did Zim say_?”

“Don’t commit a heist!”

“And what did you do?”

GIR pauses and looks at the burlap sack he has slung over his shoulder, which is filled with moneys and various supplies. “ _Ohh_ , so _that’s_ why Sizz-Lorr’s so mad!”

“Yeah, you really think so?” The footsteps get closer, and Dib flattens himself against the rock they’re hiding behind, breathing heavily. “Is there anywhere else to hide around here?”

“Well, that mountain over there is a neutral zone, ‘n he can’t get us there!” GIR points towards the same mountain Zim and Gaz are heading towards. “That’s where Tenn lives, and the Control Brains really like her ‘cause she’s a really good invader, so they just kinda let her do what she wants as long as she doesn’t betray the Empire. They do that for all the really good invaders!”

“Huh. I was expecting the rules to be a lot harsher.”

“Oh, they are! But also sometimes there’s no rules. Ya never know if they’re gonna let you go or deactivate you, so ya gotta be careful!”

“Wow, this place is a freakshow.” The two wait for Sizz-Lorr’s footsteps to get farther and farther away until they disappear completely before they jump to their feet. “Come on, let’s go.”

GIR, as Dib finds out the hard way, is a way faster runner, as he can also fly, which I guess doesn’t really make him much of a runner at all, but still. “Hey, wait up! Come back!” He turns around in midair, an almost cartoonish skidding noise sounding.

He opens up the burlap sack. “Here, get in.”

“. . . _What_?”

“Get in! Quick, he’s gonna catch us!”

Deciding that if GIR wanted to kidnap him, he would’ve done so a long time ago, Dib sighs and does as he’s told. As he does so, he falls to an all-consuming black.

~

“Alright, what the fuck is it _now_? This is just getting ridiculous.”

Dib huffs angrily and crosses his arms, floating in what appears to be space among several berries, apples, bottles, orbs, discs, and coins. “Why does _everything_ have to be a portal to an alternate dimension?” As GIR runs, the entire pocket dimension, himself included, jostles around uncomfortably. He screams, reasoning that since he’s likely in some sort of horrible purgatory, Sizz-Lorr won’t be able to hear him.

_Help . . . me._

“. . . Huh?”

_Help me!_

“Who’s there?”

**_HELP US!_ **

A thousand voices, all screaming in perfect unison. Dib gasps, holding his hands over his mouth to hide his expression, just in case they can smell fear.

A thousand tiny hands emerge from the darkness – all with green skin, all with three claw-like fingers – grasping at his coat. “What’s going on?! Where _am_ I?!”

**_We’re lost, and now, so are you._ **

“Lost?”

**_Don’t trust the Control Brains. Don’t trust the Empire. Don’t trust Her._ **

“What do you mean? Who’s _her_?”

**_Shh . . . She can hear us. She always can. But you can still escape – for now._ **

“What are you talking about? How long have you been here? . . . GIR didn’t do this, did he?” Dib notices that the hands are even smaller than Zim’s, who’s easily the smallest Irken probably ever, and a there’s a sudden sinking feeling in his chest. “Are . . . is there anything I can do to help you guys?”

**_You’d better leave before you forget how to._ **

~

Gaz and Zim have been making their treacherous way up the mountain for what seems like ages. They’ve encountered things such as monsters, landslides, poisonous berries that Zim was fucking hellbent on eating that wound up killing him but Gaz managed to find the reverse killswitch in his PAK so it’s okay, and various other dangers that I don’t feel like describing.

“Is this . . . is this . . . it?” pants Gaz, on the verge of death. Sure enough, the two have reached the weirdly flat peak, with Tenn’s dorm on the top.

“Are there any other houses on this mountain that Zim doesn’t know about?”

“Yeah, I – fuck, _I’m_ supposed to be the one making sarcastic responses to stupid questions. God damn it.”

They approach the door, but right as Zim’s about to knock, he collapses into a heap at the ground. “Get up.”

“Can’t, I’m dead.”

“Ugh.” He sits up and pulls a block of cheese out of his PAK, and she sighs heavily and sits down next to the front door, leaning against the wall. “But, y’know, maybe we _should_ catch our breath first, since we–”

At that moment, GIR barrels into his side at full throttle using his jet legs. The burlap sack he’s holding falls to the ground, and with him not there to keep it closed, a hand reaches out. Gaz scrambles to her feet, backing away. “What the _fuck_?”

“Gaz! It’s me!” says Dib, emerging from his nightmare hell prison fully. “There’s dead kids in there, Gaz. Dead Irken kids. They – they died in training, and the Empire did nothing for them. We can’t trust anyone here! And they told me I _especially_ couldn’t trust the lady in my dreams.”

“Yeah, we already knew that, but where could we run to?” She pauses. “Wait, why’s GIR carrying around a bunch of dead children in a bag?”

“I dunno, but they said he didn’t do it.”

“Ah. Well, that answers everything. Thanks.”

GIR, meanwhile, is completely oblivious to the fact he’s being accused of child murder, and is wrestling Zim over the block of cheese. “MASTER, YOU’RE NOT S’POSTA HAVE THIS! YOU’RE NOT EVEN A GROWN-UP IRKEN YET!”

“YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!”

“. . . Huh?”

“I heard a human say it back on the Earth ‘Tee-Vee.’ Not sure what it means, but I think it’s relevant. Anyways, I’m your master, and you WILL give me the–”

In response, GIR throws the cheese down the mountain, but in some miraculous stroke of bad luck, it bounces off a rock and crashes into Tenn’s window, breaking it. There’s a pause. “Y’know, we should start keeping a broken window count,” says Dib. “I bet it’s a lot.”

“Just a sec!” calls Tenn from inside, as if to her, this is a perfectly normal and acceptable substitute for knocking. She opens the door, sees everything that’s happening outside, and immediately shuts it again.

“No, Tenn, wait!” yells Zim. “We need you. We’re going on a–”

Suddenly, she opens the door again, with a fully packed suitcase. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Wh – Tenn, I thought you hated Zim!” His eyes are sparkling, as if he’s hoping that even if Irkens don’t know what a family is, maybe, just maybe, he can rebuild his relationship with his twin.

“Oh no, I still do. But whatever you’re doing, you’re probably gonna fail spectacularly, and I wanna be there to watch it.”

“That’s . . . that’s a little dark.”

She shrugs. “Honestly, everything’s been so boring ever since we stopped invading. I’m desperate for entertainment at this point.” She looks at GIR and narrows her eyes, then runs back into her house and runs back out with a spray can labeled ‘SIRUR – Standard Information Retrieval Unit Repellant.’ “Just in case.”

“Wait, are we leaving _now_?” asks Gaz incredulously.

Zim shrugs. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s afternoon by now. Skoodge and Tak should be . . . wherever it was we told them to meet us, I dunno.”

“Oh shit, they’re coming with us? Cool.”

The five prepare to leave, only to realize it’ll be another long hike down. All of them except for Tenn groan.

“Isn’t there any other way to get down?” complains Dib.

“You’re literally the only one who didn’t have to walk,” points out Gaz.

Suddenly, Zim gasps. “Wait – guys, look what Zim found!”

The rest of the team notices what looks like a zipline, but instead of a harness, there’s a little round carriage that looks a lot like one of the thingies you’d use to go down a multiplayer waterslide (or whatever those bitches are called). “What . . . what is that?”

“That’s the Smeet Annihilator – well, that’s what we all used to call it, but that wasn’t its _official_ name, of course. We used to have one of these in training, remember, Tenn? Back when it was just the seven of us – me and you and Skoodge and Tak and Red and Purple and Dot.” He sighs and looks up at the sky almost wistfully. “That’s how we lost Dot.”

“Mm-hm! My one main problem with moving here was how hard it was to get to and from my house, so I took one of these from our training simulation and made it real. It’s even less safe in the real world!”

“Uh, you – see, you sound like you’re _proud_ of that, and that’s really not something to be proud of – wait, who’s Dot?”

Before anybody can answer Dib, Gaz quickly adds, “And why couldn’t they have gotten safer equipment if you were trained in a simulation?”

“Just to keep us on our talons, I guess,” says Tenn dismissively. “Trainees can always be replaced, after all.” She hops on, holding her suitcase in her lap, and pats the spot next to her, gesturing for the team to hop on (notably, she makes sure she’s not sitting next to Zim or GIR). “You guys ready?”

“Of course!” says Zim.

“No!” says everyone else.

“Ah, well. I wasn’t gonna wait until you were anyway.” And with that, they’re off.

~

“Irk, are you _okay_?”

Pain. Everything is pain. Why can’t we ever transition into the next scene without everybody getting hurt? “No, I don’t think so,” says Dib groggily, peeling himself off the floor.

“WOO-HOO!” cheers Zim, trying to jump up but wincing in pain as he holds his arm to his side. “Just as fun as I remembered it! Good thing I didn’t break my other antenna this time. Oh,” he adds, noticing who just saw his friends crash into the main plaza at terminal velocity, “you’re right on time, Skoodge!”

“We’ve been here since 2 P.M., Zim,” says Tak, who’s leaning against a building, slightly hidden in the shadows like some sort of edgy anime character. “Do you know what time it is now, Zim? Do you _fucking know_ what time it is now?”

“Eh? Not really, no.”

“It’s almost midnight, _Zim_.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a little bit later than intended, but I’m sure it’s still fine! But the Tallest won’t be able to see us off . . .”

“Yeah, they’ve been unconscious in that donut shop since noon,” says Tenn, who somehow managed to avoid being injured and is sitting on the edge of the fountain, which is still filled with water, as she’s doing this because she craves danger and violence. “Dunno if it’s in an ‘on cheese’ way or a ‘possessed’ way. Either or, y’know?”

Dib pauses and looks around, his blood suddenly running cold. “Wait, where’s Gaz?”

As if on cue, Gaz, GIR, and MiMi turn the corner, all holding several boxes. “Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you wanna hear first?”

“Good news,” says Zim, Skoodge, and Tenn.

“Bad news,” says Dib and Tak.

“Ooh, a fifty-fifty split!” says GIR, who has no idea how to do math. “I guess we’ll do both at the same time. Sizz-Lorr gave us some free stuff and a thirty minute headstart ‘cause he recognized MiMi and he doesn’t hate Tak, but also we have thirty minutes to start running.”

The other five look at each other and shrug. “I mean, thirty minutes is a long time, right? And there’s eight of us and only one of him.”

“Yeah, but still,” adds Skoodge, “the sooner we leave, the better.”

“Everyone’s packed, right?” asks Zim.

“I dunno, but even if they _were_ , I don’t think it matters now,” says Dib. “This whole thing has turned from an expedition to running from the law . . . _very_ quickly.”

“Don’t be silly, of course it’s still an expedition! We’re heading to the same place, after all. Sizz-Lorr hunting us down as a twisted form of one-man vigilante justice is, uh, an added bonus, that’s all! Just some extra motivation for us to get our move on.”

Gaz sighs. “So I guess this is where we fuckin’ . . . ride into the sunset or some shit?”

“Mm-hm.”

~

“I . . . I can’t help but feel like we’re moving things along too quickly.”

She glares at him. “Do you doubt me?” she hisses, her voice low and threatening. There’s no warmth behind her eyes, no kindness.

He shrinks back. “N-no, of course not! I’d never doubt you! It’s just that, well . . .”

“”Well’ what?”

“I’m just worried, is all. We should leave this up to the Control Brains. It’s never been our job to actually _do_ things. We’re just figureheads.”

She turns away from him, her expression unreadable. “Maybe _you_ are, but I am _nothing_ like the others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TGE INTERNET WENT DOWN IM *UNHINGES*


	10. Discount Crags of Lament

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE warning, the last part of this chapter gets uh. a lot more Violent than usual for this fic

“Oh, I’m filled with so much anger.”

This is the third time they’ve been knocked out and mysteriously thrown out of the dungeon, even though by all means, they should be dead. Dib groans, curled up on the ground in a fetal position. “At this point, I say we just let Sizz-Lorr catch us. They’re probably not gonna kill us, since the Tallest are in no state to do . . . _anything_ , really.”

“Yeah, at this point, why hasn’t there been an uprising yet?” points out Gaz. “Nobody actually _likes_ the Tallest or the Control Brains or basically anything around here. What are they gonna do to stop us, faint?”

Zim gasps as if she’s just confessed to several previously unsolved murder cases. “Gaz! Look, I know you’re new, but you can’t just say things like that. The Control Brains can hear anything you say as long as you have a . . . have . . . a . . . oh. Well, Zim supposes you’re fine then. And Dib,” he adds, “we’re not giving up. Look at us! We’re _Irken invaders_ – well, uh, I mean, half of us are. GIR and MiMi are state-of-the-art killing machines with all of the multiverse’s information in their hands–”

“HEY! MASTER! GUYS! LOOK HERE! I FOUND SOME BONES!” GIR holds up a skull that vaguely resembles a horse with dog teeth. He looks at it, looks back at the group, unhinges his metal jaw like a snake, and shoves the whole thing in, eating it with a sickening _crunch_ noise. “Ooh, tastes like _pointy_!”

“. . . See?” says Zim, after pausing a moment in order to desperately find some good in what just happened. “He’s powerful enough to crush bones with his mouth. Imagine what he could do to our enemies! And oh yeah, then we have Dib and Gaz. Zim would say we have a pretty great group here! I mean, what can go wrong? We have four Irken super-soldiers, Dib and Gaz, and two unstoppable death machines.”

“I’ve been stopped!” yells GIR, dislodging a large canine tooth from his ‘stomach’ compartment and shrieking in pain as though he’s been stabbed.

“Oh, for the love of – let me help.” Zim runs over to him and, as he just said, tries to help, with an arguable degree of success, as I’m not entirely sure what bandages are supposed to do for a robot. MiMi, meanwhile, does a funny little dance around the two while Tenn watches, her can of SIRUR handy just in case – while she normally trusts MiMi, GIR makes other SIRs entirely unpredictable.

Tak narrows her eyes at Dib. “So I know Gaz has weird powers, but what can _you_ do?”

“I, uh . . . I guess I’m just really lucky? There’s this weird ghost lady who won’t let me die but keeps saying she will. I dunno. I’m kinda scared.” He pauses. “Wait, do you remember me? I mean, we were friends for a little bit, before you tried to destroy Earth. I know we were only friends because we both hated Zim, but I’m desperate enough for meaningful connections to say it counted.”

She thinks about this for a moment. “No, I can’t say I know you. I knew a human who was also named Dib, but he was a human and you’re an Irken.”

“God damn it.”

“Hey, guys?” says Skoodge, watching a hologram he’s put up. “Sizz-Lorr is getting _really_ close. I think we need to run.”

“How’d it even take him this long to catch up to us to begin with?” Tenn wonders out loud. “We’ve been knocked out three times.”

“Wait, how do you have him on your Futuristic 3D Video Thingy?” says Tak (the reveal that this is the official name nearly kills Gaz on the spot). “That’s only for teammates. We’re related and _I_ don’t even have him on my Futuristic 3D Video Thingy.”

“I have my ways,” he says vaguely.

“Ah, well, that checks out,” says Zim, having given up on trying to give first-aid to GIR after he ate the bandages. “Ready for Round 4?”

“Nope.”

“Definitely not.”

“Not really.”

“That’s the spirit!” And with that, they’re off.

~

“Watch your step.”

The dungeon, which doesn’t technically have a name but has been dubbed _DANGER_ (followed by a picture of an Irken falling to their death, which is pronounced by at least one Irken in the group screaming as their voice gets quieter and quieter) by the gang after seeing a warning sign – a rarity, considering that the Irken Empire doesn’t care if smeets equivalent to five-year-olds die in training – is a long series of tall, cylindrical, flat-topped rocks that they haphazardly hop on. They may not have stumbled upon any enemies yet, but still, it’s no wonder they’ve fucked it up three times already, and it’s genuinely a miracle they’re still alive.

“Y’know, here I was, thinking, ‘we’ve had a giant cloud and a basement tunnel system dungeon, surely they can’t get much more ridiculous than that?’ But no. Of course not.” Dib has been ranting like this for several minutes now, but nobody’s really paying him any mind.

GIR giggles, the jets in his feet activated, as he flies over the rest of the four. MiMi is flying next to him, her flight pattern a little bit more wobbly and her eyes teal. “Why can’t they just carry us?” asks Tak. “GIR can carry your whole team, and MiMi could carry the rest of us.”

Gaz shrugs. “Same reason a Flying-type can’t just fly out of a dungeon.”

“What . . . are you talking about? The hell is a Flying-type?”

“Nothing.”

“I’d rather die than let a SIR unit carry me,” adds Tenn.

“But yeah, there was a dungeon in _Gates to Infinity_ that was kinda like this.” Gaz proceeds to talk, not caring that exactly one person has any idea what she’s talking about and he is trying very, very hard not to fall to his death. “I think it was called the Crags of Lament? The Pokémon were _way_ better at naming dungeons than you guys.”

Tak stops walking. “How do _you_ know so much about Pokémon?”

“They’re–” starts Dib.

“I gave her a book,” says Skoodge, whose interruption is honestly a good thing as Dib was about to put himself and Gaz into the position of explaining that the extinct alien race that used to inhabit this planet are actually video game characters from their world.

“You _WHAT_?” Tak gasps, her eyes as wide as saucer plates. “When did you do this?!”

“After she got hurt in the Echo Caves mission. Why?”

“That is _valuable_ Empire information, and you gave it to a _smeet_ _with no PAK_? No offense.” She continues on before Gaz can tell her that she absolutely does take offense. “She isn’t a part of the Irken Empire’s coding! The Control Brains have no power over her! Do you realize she could do _whatever she wants_ with that book?”

“I don’t see what the problem is.” Skoodge also stops walking. “I mean, she’s still an Irken, isn’t she? Most Irkens don’t defect. And even the ones _with_ PAKs can defect – remember Bob? And that navigator that the Tallest kept bullying? Both of them defected. Having a PAK doesn’t make anybody more or less trustworthy.”

“A PAK-less Irken is a freak of nature – no offense. Irkens, for the most part, _are_ their PAKs, so technically, Dib and Gaz aren’t even Irken!”

“THANK you!” says Dib.

Skoodge turns around to face Tak. “But there hasn’t been a problem yet. Both of them have been doing exactly what they’re supposed to, for the most part – and I know about the SIR thing, Zim told me–”

“ _ZIM, I FUCKING SWEAR TO IRK_.”

“–but you did that too. So, really, doesn’t that make you as ‘defective’ as them?”

“Can you guys _please_ argue somewhere else?” asks Tenn, hopping over a particularly large gap with a self-provided cartoonish sound effect like from _Fireboy and Watergirl_. “This seems like the absolute worst place to start fighting among ourselves.”

“Yes,” adds Zim, “we can fall apart as a group later.”

Tak glares at Skoodge, who shrugs and continues walking. Mumbling under her breath, she follows the rest of the group.

~

Aside from a few people stumbling a bit, the hike is largely uneventful. Nobody’s fallen, nobody’s activated any trap tiles, and aside from Tak and Skoodge’s argument, they haven’t really had anything to say to each other (aside from a few plot-unimportant conversations and the occasional ‘hey don’t fall off a cliff and die please’). Still no enemies, which is . . . concerning.

“Y’know,” says Tenn, “I think this is the farthest we’ve ever gotten!”

This is good news, but nobody’s really in a cheering-and-clapping mood.

“I wonder why there hasn’t been any enemies y–”

“ _NO._ Dib, you shut the _fuck_ up _right now_.” Gaz’s eyes open to give her brother a look that probably would kill him if it could. “Every time somebody says some stupid shit like ‘oh where are the enemies’ or ‘oh this is going well,’ everything goes to shit. Dungeon trips do _not_ require small talk, and it’s better for everyone when nobody speaks. Less headache-inducing.”

“I mean – yeah, you’re right, but haven’t there been a lot less enemies here than there are in the games? Like, whenever I played, I kept getting cornered and killed right in the same room as the stairs.”

“The . . . the game?” asks Skoodge. Gaz glares at Dib, as if to say ‘now you’ve done it.’

“Uh – well – yeah, where we’re from, there’s a whole video game series about Mystery Dungeons and Pokémon and all that. It’s actually a spinoff of a series where you capture Pokémon and use them in elaborate, consensual, elemental dogfights.” Now the entire group stops walking, because while Zim is hard of hearing, Tak and Tenn are having a conversation, and GIR and MiMi are just kinda off doing their own robot baby thing, of course they all hear this in particular. “But, uh, there’s an explanation, I’m sure!” stammers Dib. “Florpus hole weirdness and all that, I guess? I mean, that’s as good an explanation as any for everything we’ve been through–”

A deep, _unnaturally_ deep growling sound shakes the pillars.

The group steadies themselves where they’re standing. They look at each other, able to communicate exactly what they’re all thinking nonverbally, which is somewhere along the lines of ‘oh _fuck_.’

The growling grows louder. The pillars shake a bit more, and the one GIR is standing on crumbles to the ground, though he quickly manages to save himself by flying, giggling as though he doesn’t realize the danger. “Zim thinks we might need to run.”

“Do you really think so?” asks Dib sarcastically, though a part of him wonders if he might’ve jinxed it by asking where the enemies are.

“GIR! Help carry Dib and Gaz.”

“MiMi, you too.”

The two SIR units fly over to the pair, GIR holding Dib’s hand, MiMi holding Gaz’s hand, and the siblings holding each other’s hand as they fly off like some sort of unfinished friendship circle. Zim, Tak, Skoodge, and Tenn unleash their PAK legs, crawling over the pillars in a manner that disturbingly resembles a pack of spiders, which are notorious for traveling in packs. Why they couldn’t have used this arrangement to begin with is beyond me.

The growling turns to roaring, which is definitely getting closer. The pillars behind the group break and shatter to pieces – Gaz looks down at the clouds below them and notices a long, serpent-like figure barreling straight through them. It almost looks like . . .

“Hey, quick question, _is that a fucking Rayquaza_?”

“Hmm . . . nope!” says GIR cheerfully. “Rayquaza’s a Pokémon and all the Pokémon are dead. Plus, the ‘IR’ in my name stands for ‘Information Retrieval,’ so if that were a Pokémon, I’d know!”

“Okay. What is it, then?”

“Dunno!”

The roaring gets louder. Finally, spiraling into the clouds above, they see them. “The stairs!” yells Tenn, as if the others don’t know what stairs are.

“Hurry!” yells Zim, as if the others aren’t really in a rush.

They run up the stairs – or, well, the Irkens do, GIR and MiMi are still carrying Dib and Gaz, trailing behind the rest of the group since they evidently don’t know it’d be better to just fly straight up. Everything fades to black, for some reason.

~

They wind up on solid land – well, I mean, it’s still a pillar, but it’s roughly the same size as the average living room. There’s no mysterious air, no indication that they’re still in a dungeon; in fact, everything seems relatively calm and peaceful. Behind them are the stairs they just came from, in front of them is another set of stairs, and right in the middle is an old, decaying, mossy statue of what appears to be some sort of anthropomorphic lizard with a smaller lizard in its stomach pouch, like a kangaroo.

“Is it over? Are we safe?” asks Skoodge, still breathing heavily.

“Well, since enemies can’t follow us up the stairs for some reason, Zim thinks we’re safe.”

Dib walks over to the statue, examining it closely. “That’s a Kangaskhan statue. This is a checkpoint.”

“And that means . . . ?”

“We’re safe.”

Gaz gently places a hand on the statue’s head and it warms up, glowing slightly and humming. Her eyes widen. “This is . . . a save point. But why? Saving and loading are things you do in video games, not in real life. This isn’t fucking _Undertale_.” She pauses. “Is it?”

“No, Gaz, we’re not in _Undertale_.”

“Okay, just checking. Anything’s possible at this point.”

“Can I try?”

She shrugs and gestures toward the statue dramatically. Dib places his hand on its head and it does the same thing for him. “Huh. There’s also an option to leave items and moneys here.”

“Why would we do that? Our PAKs can carry anything.”

“Yeah, I figure it was for the Pokémon. They had to use bags, and if they got knocked out, they lost things. I guess Kangaskhan Storage and Duskull Bank aren’t really an option anymore, since Kangaskhan and Duskull are, uh . . . dead. Wow. That’s really weird to think about.”

“Do you think we should camp out here?” asks Tenn. “I think we could all use a break.”

“Ooh, I like camping!” says GIR, who has never been camping.

“If . . . if saving is an option, do you think we should save?” suggests Dib. “I mean, if we’re _supposed_ to save and we _don’t_ , then would that kill us?”

“I was thinking more of a ‘fate-worse-than-death’ type deal, since I don’t think we can die,” says Tak.

“Careful. That’s the exact line of thinking that’s gotten many a good Irken soldier killed.”

“Oh, so _now_ the asshole who nearly destroyed his home planet in a mech because he got in and immediately got a complex is going to preach to me!”

“Well, we’re not immortal, and we shouldn’t act like it! Invaders get killed all the time. _Irkens_ get killed all the time. You should never let your guard down. Or have you forgotten what it’s like to risk your life in battle because you’ve been on Dirt for so long?”

“Now you’ve fucking done it, clown.”

But before the argument can escalate into a brawl, Dib takes a deep breath, places his hand on the statue’s head, and closes his eyes, realizing he has no idea how to save without a screen interface. He hopes what he did was saving, but as the whole world starts to gently shimmer like a heat wave, he realizes, considering the general track record of things, _probably not_.

~

“Dib.”

“Yes, Gaz?”

“What the fuck did you do?”

For once, they haven’t been transferred to the next dungeon by being knocked out; they’re standing on the same small pillars as before, but far closer to the ground.

Or, rather, the water.

Underneath them is some sort of river, judging by the current, but they can’t see either side of it – dungeons don’t abide by our rules, so this is just as well. This is arguably worse than their previous situation, given what happens to Irkens when submerged in water, and it’s also probably why they spawned (for lack of a better word) standing up and not knocked out, so as to not fall in and end this story abruptly. 

There’s a sign next to Zim on his pillar; a warning sign with the same format as the first one, but with the text _WHAT ARE YOU EVEN STILL DOING HERE?_

“Is that what saving does?” asks Dib. “In the games, saving was a chance to, you know, _save your progress and log off_. It didn’t automatically teleport you to the next part of the dungeon, that’s – that’s the exact opposite of the intention.”

“Oh no, saving doesn’t work anymore!” says GIR. “The whole manipulating-timelines thing stopped workin’ when the planet split apart.”

“Wh – then why didn’t you stop me?!”

“I dunno!”

“Look, let’s just keep moving. I don’t know how long we still have until Sizz-Lorr catches us,” says Skoodge.

Dib sighs, reasoning both that Skoodge is probably right and that arguing with GIR would be like arguing with a brick wall. The group continues on, hopping from pillar-to-pillar in the same way they did before, before Tak comes to a realization:

“Wait, hold on, is Sizz-Lorr dead?”

They all stop and turn to look at each other. “Skoodge, check your Futuristic 3D Video Thingy,” orders Zim, and he does so.

The little cartoonish icon is at the spot just before the beginning of the first dungeon, but it’s still very much there. “So . . . how is he alive, exactly?”

Tenn shrugs. “Maybe he never actually followed us in? Or maybe he got knocked out instead of killed, like we did.”

“But either way, that means we’re not running from anything anymore,” points out Zim. “Great news, everyone! Our expedition is once again an expedition and no longer an escape route.”

GIR cheers, but nobody else does. Zim, who has never read a room in his life and is not about to start now, lets out some sort of victory shout before turning around and nearly marching directly into the water.

The rest of the gang exchanges a look – at any rate, Dib and Gaz are kinda glad they’re no longer the only sane men of the group. Deciding it’s too late to ditch Zim, they follow him through the dungeon.

After a good few moments of blissful silence, Dib decides he is going to curse all eight of them once more. “Gaz, I know you’re gonna kill me for saying this, but enemies can’t follow you from one part of a dungeon to the other, right?”

“Only if they’re plot-important.”

“Okay, good. So that weird . . . serpent . . . not-Rayquaza thing wasn’t important, right? I mean, we never even got a good look at it, so we’re probably fi–”

_CRASH._

There’s not even a warning this time.

~

When she wakes up, Gaz isn’t entirely convinced she’s alive. Every inch of her is screaming in pain. This isn’t like the laser wound she got that one time, this is much, much worse. It’s like somebody slam dunked her into a vat of acid.

Her eyes flutter open a bit. The rest of the group is lying around her, and they’re on . . . some sort of rocky beach? She thinks? (The sharp stones digging into her flesh do nothing to help the pain.) The smell of burning meat hangs in the air. Her vision clears up a little bit, allowing her to get a better view of what happened to them, and she’s hoping to God she’s seeing wrong. Tentatively, she moves her own arm (despite its protests) in front of her face.

She almost screams, but all that comes out is a pitiful little squeaking noise.

Even now, her skin is bubbling like a liquid, and it hurts more than anything she’s ever been through.

She nudges Dib, who’s lying in a crumpled heap in front of her. He whimpers and, thankfully, stirs awake. “What . . . ?” His voice is just as weak and raspy as hers.

“Water.”

He notices the blisters, the bubbles, and he suddenly feels nauseous. “God. Oh God.”

Gaz gestures faintly towards the rest of the group, who she can’t turn her head to look at. “Alive?”

“. . . Dunno.” A pause. “GIR.”

“What?”

“He’s active. Hey. Over here.”

GIR turns to look at him, sparks flying from his head and one eye shattered, dark, and gray. “Hm? What’s wrong?”

“What do you think is wrong?”

“Oh right. Yeah, everyone’s hurt real bad. I don’t think water’s good for Irkens.”

“Really? What made you think that?” Gaz winces in pain. “Do we have medicine?”

“Nope!”

“Is there anything around that can help?”

“Maybe! There’s a berry tree right over here, but my database is all glitchy, so I dunno what those are.”

“Describe them to me.”

“Well, it’s a tree–”

“I meant the berries.”

“Okie-dokie! Well, they’re light blue with dark blue polka dots and green leaves.”

“Rawst berries,” mutters Gaz. “They heal burns. Bring them here.”

GIR’s one functional eye glows red. “No! You’re not my master!” Back to teal. “Sure thing!” He tries to fly over to the tree, but his rockets sputter out, sending him crashing to the ground. He stands up, dusts himself off, and proceeds to walk the rest of the way to the tree, climbing it like a little squirrel (not the evil kind) and, with lightning speed, plucks all of the berries from the tree, shoving them in a bag Gaz doesn’t remember him having (hopefully not the one with the spirits of the damned trapped inside). He carries the bag back to Dib and Gaz, handing them each a berry. “Here you go!”

Gaz pushes the pain to the back of her mind as she grabs the berry and lifts it to her mouth. She takes a bite – they have the exact same texture as strawberries, only bitter – and Dib follows suit. Immediately, their skin stops sizzling. While the pain is still there, it’s much less noticeable, and the two simultaneously sigh in relief. Dib sits up, but Gaz chooses to still lie on the ground.

“Are the others okay?”

None of the Irkens have stirred yet. Not only do they have the same blistering as the Membrane siblings, their PAKs are sparking – it’s like they got the worst of both worlds from both halves of ‘biomechanical.’ MiMi is awake, but instead of paying attention to what the others are doing, she’s nervously holding Tak’s hand; physically she appears to have less damage than GIR, but functionally, Dib and Gaz know to expect the worst.

GIR bursts into tears. “I dunno!” He starts sobbing uncontrollably and hugs Dib, who isn’t quite sure what to do.

Gaz stands up, stumbling a little bit and grimacing, before grabbing four of the berries and walking over to the rest of the group. She kneels down beside them, by all means looking like she’s about to gently heal them with the power of friendship, before angrily prying Zim’s mouth open and shoving a whole berry down his throat. This, somehow, works, as the burn wounds begin to miraculously heal, and she follows suit with the other three, who are also somehow okay – well, kinda.

Zim’s eyes open, but for once, he doesn’t have anything to say, which is concerning; he just groans quietly and curls back into a fetal position.

“Their PAKs,” says Dib simply.

“Irken technology doesn’t break that easily!” says GIR, who has already stopped weeping. “It just _kinda_ breaks. They’re probably not gonna die, we just need to wait for their PAKs to get un-waterlogged.”

“I . . . okay.” Dib is about to argue, but realizes ‘probably’ is probably the best result they can get here. “What should we do until then?”

“Ooh! We could camp!”

Dib and Gaz turn to look to each other and shrug. Honestly, it’s not like they have anything better to do at the moment.


End file.
